Post by StevePulaski on Aug 4, 2015 11:08:20 GMT -5
Strange Magic (2015)
Directed by: Gary Rydstrom
Rating: ★½
Directed by: Gary Rydstrom
Rating: ★½
Strange Magic takes place in a forest, where the population is segmented between fairies and creatures, who live in the light and dark sections of the forest, respectively. The borders are defined by an abundance of primrose flowers, which are the key ingredient to love potions in the land. Marianne (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) is a fairy princess and a heir to the throne of the land's kingdom, and is also engaged to Roland (Sam Palladio), a warrior who winds up breaking her heart by cheating on her on her wedding day. Heartbroken and sick over Roland's disloyalty, Marianne vows to never fall in love again and looks to protect her younger sister Dawn (Meredith Anne Bull) from making the same mistake she did. However, when the love potion is stole from the forest, the Bog King (Alan Cumming), a despicable, ugly creature from the dark part of the forest, takes Dawn as a hostage until he gets the potion back to destroy the fabric of love in the kingdom, Marianne and her pal Sunny (Elijah Kelley) work to try and negotiate with the Bog King to get Marianne's sister back.
George Lucas, who crafted the story for Strange Magic and allowed the film to be released on his Lucasfilm platform, has stated that Strange Magic serves as Star Wars for teenage girls. Comparing this film in anyway to Star Wars in my mind, someone who has never been a hardcore fan of the series, is beyond overblown because the elements that made Star Wars connect and resonate are entirely missing here. For instance, this "Dark Forest" world screenwriters David Berenbaum, Irene Mecchi, and Gary Rydstrom has no personality whatsoever. In Star Wars, the environment was a character in itself, and Lucas built upon the world in a methodical fashion that allowed viewers to resonate with the location and those who inhabited it. Strange Magic rushes through all the development to focus on cookie-cutter characters and a hodgepodge of babble between them that it barely has time to work with what it has in any way that comes off as memorable.
Another problem is the characters here, all of whom basic archetypes - fairies and grotesque-looking creatures, none of which ever breaking their mold into something worthwhile (or worth watching for that matter). In an age where animated films are cast in a different light thanks to the progressive Pixar and DreamWorks in terms of storytelling and thematic weight, to focus yet another story on fairies and goblins and not provide them with any substance is like returning to the traditions of decades past that have proven to be defunct and unsuccessful.
The characters are even more sacrificed in terms of substance when they have to break out in song, however, not songs written especially for the film - mainstream pop hits that are covered by the voice actors in the film, some multiple times throughout the course of the film. Songs like Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" and Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" are covered by the cast in a way that's more cloying than your average Kidz Bop CD. It also becomes an apparent filler-device, as numerous songs find themselves sung over and over again by the same characters in different situations, providing for nothing other than tedium.
To call Strange Magic the Star Wars film for girls is a desecration of Lucas's appreciated and beloved franchise, and to even suggest its character and its world is even half as involving as that classic franchise is a woefully misguided idea. Furthermore, the themes presented in Strange Magic about love find themselves having some merit (the idea that the idea of love shouldn't be discarded because of one mishap or shortcoming is a fairly original idea for an animated film), but are so muddled beneath layers of tiresome musical numbers and grotesque characters with little to say that it makes an hope of this film resonating on a deeper level completely hopeless.
Voiced by: Evan Rachel Wood, Meredith Anne Bull, Elijah Kelley, Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Maya Rudolph, Alfred Molina, and Sam Palladio. Directed by: Gary Rydstrom.