Strange Magic

The following review contains some SPOILERS, so if you plan to watch Strange Magic, just do not read this review!!! If you have made it this far, then you have been warned. There is a song that goes: "Love is a bitch, it brings everyone down." taking that line out of any other context and leaving it as it is, I have just summed up the whole idea of this movie, in which the characters had to sing in an incredibly complicated and, for me, not very nice way. I originally thought it could not possibly be that tragic because it is Disney after all, and when I saw that Lucasfilm had a hand in it, I had great expectations. Unfortunately, the only positive thing about this movie is the rather good animation. For example, the lizard looks like a lizard should look, the surroundings and landscapes and environment are pretty well-designed, and that is about it. Then there are just things I had trouble watching. I am going to start with the characters. I have not seen such a cast of utterly repulsive characters in a long time. Probably the worst was the suitor, who had all the sleaziness of Prince Charming and a load more, so watching him was sheer torture. The little elf was an absolutely ugly affair, too, and no matter how hard I tried, I just could not bring myself to root for him. On the other hand, the princess did an amazing turn from naive drone to the bitter warrior princess. However, being too bitter and too "strong," she could not register with me either. However, I did not see that the main female protagonist should be adorable, or at least some hint of charisma. It was the same with the main "bad guy." If I want to perform a Shrek-style romantic etude, the "ugly" and bitter dummy should have at least some personal charm to make me root for him. However, I did not find that with him. As for the second princess, she maintained her pose of naive and stupid drone for most of the movie, and even I got fed up with her at the moments when she started singing, and the twist when she suddenly realizes how she actually got this love thing was completely unbelievable to me. So the characters annoyed me beyond belief, and I did not like any of them, which has not happened in a long time. I have already mentioned the narrative, its lack of depth and all the development and progress felt rather forced at times. What was also a total bummer was the choice of music. The songs were probably chosen to have the word "love" in each one, however, I did not feel moved by most of them. Plus, the hits chosen were ones that I am most familiar with, yet that never really appealed to me and were edited in a way that also annoyed me most of the time. The soundtrack did not have any spark and did not appeal to me, which is a pretty big bummer for a movie with a ton of singing. In my opinion, the bottom line is that this is a show starring terrible and unlikable characters in a narrative that lacks any depth and does not move me. Also, it contains songs that did not appeal to me, all set against a pretty well-designed backdrop, which cannot redeem my final negative impression. I am going to award this show one star for the animation and one star for the Shrek punchline because, as a bitter ogre, I do not only root for the pretty people. However, it still does not deserve more than a 2.5/10 in my book. (15/12/2015) (less) (more)