Strange Magic - Review

Two neighboring fantasy lands (The Fairy Kingdom and The Dark Forest) begin to be entangled with each other when a forbidden love potion is concocted and causes much amorous confusion among their leaders and denizens. STRANGE MAGIC has a watchability factor that depends on whether or not the viewer can endure massive headaches, garish animation, terrible storytelling, regressive attitudes, and a large catalog of pop and rock songs that are either outdated for today's youth or pathetically thrown in for a rib. The jukebox musical stylings should have been the first things ditched from George Lucas' putrid vision, as they are geared way too heavily toward adult tastes (one joke revolves around the knowledge of "Without You"), eat up too much of the running time, produced very mediocrely despite the singing efforts of Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming, and completely confuses up the main plot (ballad singing is detrimental for the bog people yet they sing all the time?!). The film was and still is marketed as a very loose remake of "A Midsummer's Night Dream" but that is pure hogwash; Lucasfilm just stole from their parent company's vault and did BEAUTY AND THE BEAST all over again, complete with an uncharismatic Gaston who is given an Elvis makeover, you know for kids. Though I wasn't offended by the treatment of the black elf like other reviewers, I was unnerved by the film's view of the females, particularly with main heroine Marianne. She can't be an independent badass at first, she had to have her heart broken by her fiancee, hence why a girl would change from dresses to swords. She also can't declare to anyone, even her king father, how the beloved knight cheated on her because that would hurt the plot progression and prevent the king and the film's agenda of her needing a husband to rule the land. And finally, despite the transgressive efforts of TANGLED, Marianne eventually falls deeply in love with someone, someone who she just spent time with for twenty minutes! STRANGE MAGIC may not be as bad other animated atrocities like DELGO and the like but the sheer amount of crappy and annoying artistic decisions cause this movie to be hard to sit through or find any tiny moment of joy.


FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5