Strange Magic

An animated fantasy dreamed up by George Lucas, Strange Magic is indeed very strange.  It's a confused and convoluted mash up of a fractured fairy tale, William Shakespeare (the filmmakers claim it was loosely based on A Midsummer Night's Dream), a swashbuckling adventure story and a Broadway musical.  I have no doubt that these elements could be combined to create an entertaining film, but it would require a better screenplay than what we're given.

The film opens in a fairy kingdom located in an enchanted forest, where the fairy princess Marianne (voice by Evan Rachel Wood) is set to marry the handsome yet oafish Prince Roland (Sam Palladio).  When it's revealed that Roland is unfaithful, Marianne turns her back on love, and decides to devote her life to being a warrior princess who is skilled in combat.  Her sister, Dawn (Meredith Anne Bull), meanwhile continues to flirt with every fairy and elf in the kingdom, not realizing that an elf by the name of Sunny (Elijah Kelly) longs for her.  Sunny has heard of a love potion that can be made from the petals of a certain flower, and plots to track the flower down so he can make it, and have Dawn fall in love with him.  There are two problems with this plan.  The first is that the flower only grows around the forbidden dark area of the forest, which is ruled by the cockroach-like Bog King (Alan Cumming) and his army of goblins.  Second of all, the only one who can create the potion is the Sugar Plum Fairy (Kristen Chenoweth, who after The Boy Next Door and now this, is not having a good weekend), and she is being held captive in the Bog King's castle.

Sunny ventures into the dark part of the forest to get the flower, and track down the Sugar Plum Fairy in order to get a love potion.  Though plot circumstances far too complicated to recap here, Dawn ends up a prisoner of the Bog King, but falls madly in love with him because she is sprinkled with some of the love potion.  Sunny must track down what remains of the potion that has been stolen by a strange white rat-like creature called an Imp.  Marianne goes into the dark forest in order to save her sister, meets up with the Bog King, and finds out that he's not really evil, he's just misunderstood, and like her had his heart broken once long ago.  The oafish Prince Roland is leading an army of fairies to raid the Bog King's castle.  Oh, and even though the Bog King is an insect-like creature, he has a frog-like creature for a mother, who is voiced by Maya Rudolph, and is portrayed as a stereotypical Jewish Mother type.  Are you following this?

Maybe Strange Magic's plot would make more sense if it didn't feel like it was being constantly stopped every two minutes for the characters to break into a recognizable pop song that kinda/sorta fits what's currently happening in the scene, but really just slows the movie to a halt every time the music starts up.  There are over 20 songs in the film, ranging mostly from the 60s to the 80s.  The idea of putting classic pop songs in the context of a comedic fantasy has worked in the past (most notably the original Shrek), but here the songs exist simply to drag things out.  When Dawn dreams of finding love at a festival dance, she suddenly breaks into "I Wanna Dance With Somebody Who Loves Me".  When Marianne is initially dreaming of wedded bliss with Roland, she croons "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You".  When the fairy army is marching off to the Bog King's castle, they march to the beat of "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, for some inexplicable reason.

As if the movie stopping every few minutes to squeeze another song in on the soundtrack wasn't bad enough, the look of the film is garish.  Some of the backgrounds have really nice details, but the characters veer on the side of the uncanny valley, especially the faces, which just don't look right.  Just as garish as the visuals is the screenplay, which is credited to three different writers. (George Lucas came up with the idea for the film.) The script is one of those movies that believes that something needs to be happening at every single moment.  There are no quiet moments, or time for reflection.  If the movie gives us something to think about on our own, it has somehow failed us.  Every feeling, every emotion must be spelled out, or matched up with a pop song.  The jokes aren't that funny, the characters are not memorable, and while the songs are sung well by the cast, they end up adding nothing.

When it comes to recent animated misfires, Strange Magic is nowhere near as bad as Walking With Dinosaurs.  It's mediocre, kind of mindless, but also pretty harmless and forgettable.  Really little kids who haven't seen very many movies might enjoy it for its bright colors and bouncy songs.  However, to the parents of those children, I guarantee that there are better options than this for them to watch out there.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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