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
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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: 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
ReplyDelete