Why I Saw This Movie:
Some
friends from work invited me along with them, and I’m pretty much game to see
anything. If I had needed extra
convincing, Whisky Prajer’s unqualified recommendation of this movie would have pushed me over the edge.
Positive Points
* Likeable
characters that are easy to cheer for.
* Beautifully animated
* A Ruritanian romance story in the fictional
German Duchy is beautifully animated, and with enough loving details to make
you really immersed in the setting.
* The Mickey-Mouse short at the beginning is a great tribute
to the era of “Steamboat Willie” cartoons.
* As my friend pointed out to me upon leaving the theatre,
the film does a brilliant job of creating expectations for a cliché fairy tale
ending, and then turning that cliché on its head—I can’t say more without
spoilers.
Negative Points
* This is one of those annoying stories in which the whole
premise revolves around a simple misunderstanding and a contrived reason for
why one character can’t just simply explain to the other character what is
happening.
* The movie is overloaded with songs—a couple of which are
good, and the rest of which are just filler.
* This is probably because I’m not in the target audience,
but the humor of this film felt desperate, like the writers were flailing just
a little bit too hard to try and land the jokes.
The Review
I won’t lie, this film had its
irritations (listed above in the Negative column). But mostly those irritations were trumped by
the film’s ability to create a beautiful, magical 19th Century Ruritanian (W) environment, and my desire to get immersed in that
environment.
Ratings :
7 Stars (Based purely on watchability factor, not on the
film’s status as high art.)
Other Things I Would
Talk About If I Wasn’t Limiting Myself To 100 Words
* The experience
of seeing this movie in a theater together with the citizens of a tropical country
Links
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky University Commencement Address 1999 Speech to College Students
3 comments:
If I didn't have kids -- daughters, especially -- I'd have been hard-pressed to see this movie. Glad you liked it as much as you did.
I probably wouldn't have gone to see this on my own initiative, but friends from work were going and I get to the cinema here so rarely that I was game to go along and see any movie. That, plus I had read your review before going, which reassured me that it wouldn't be a complete waste of time.
Update: Although I was initially charmed by this movie on the first watching, I am rapidly losing my patience with the cultural phenomenon that it has became. If I hear any of the songs in this movie one more time, I'm going to tear my ears out. And I'm beginning to think my 7 rating was way too generous
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