"Strange Magic" Movie Review

For my next couple of reviews I'm going to pay attention to one of the greatest playwrights and poets of all time; William Shakespeare. His words have transcended not only the ages, but also into different parts of our classic and contemporary culture. It's no surprise that The Bard's works would eventually wind up on the Silver Screen either in faithful adaptation or as inspiration for other stories to flourish. "Strange Magic" is one such story that is roughly based on "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

"Strange Magic" was originally a story George Lucas came up with as a romantic girl-friendly version of Star Wars for his daughters. The film itself is a Shakespearean-inspired fairy tale that is also a musical, with all of its songs being made up of different pop and classic rock songs. Think "A Knight's Tale" with added enchantment. Back in 2012 when Lucas sold Lucas Film LTD to Disney, his animation studio was included in the deal. "Strange Magic" was in the middle of production, so Disney also inherited the movie.

The film opens up with a little prologue introducing the land the story will be taking place in. There's the Fairy Kingdom, and The Dark Forest; both are separated by a line of primroses that grow along the borders of the two lands. The leader of the Dark Forest, The Bog King (played by the amazing Alan Cumming), routinely orders the destruction of the primroses as they are a key ingredient needed to make love potions and love is something he detests. In his quest to snuff out love, he has also taken the Sugar Plum Fairy (Kristen Chenoweth) prisoner, as she is the only one who can make love potions.

We're then introduced to the main character of the story, the fairy princess Marianne (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) who is engaged to be married to a fairy knight Roland (Sam Palladio).

Marianne [found on Google Images]

After Marianne discovers her knight in shining armor isn't who she thought he was, she calls off the wedding and rejects the idea of finding love and turns her focus to being independent and self reliant, while at the same time trying to keep her younger boy-crazy sister Dawn (Meredith Anne Bull) from making the same mistake she had made when it came to love. Dawn's best friend Sunny (Elijah Kelly) is an elf, who is in unrequited love with her, gets tricked by Roland into going into the Bog King's lair and getting a love potion from the Sugar Plum Fairy. The Bog King finds out a love potion was created and was smuggled out of his lair and into the Fairy Kingdom, and he goes to hunt it down, and in the process kidnaps Dawn and holds her ransom until the potion is returned to him. This leads Marianne, Sunny, and Roland and others on a mission to bring back Dawn, but in true "A Midsummer Night's Dream" fashion, hi jinx involving a misplaced love potion arise and add extra chaos to the quest.



It was released in January 2015 from Touchstone Pictures and the film did not do well at the box office and received lukewarm response from audiences and critics alike. While the main focus of the film is love, many felt that this film had little to no heart. All of the romantic tropes presented in the story line really aren't fully explored and in some cases they become more like

Dawn defending the Bog King [found on
Google Images]

stereotypes; which is a missed opportunity because the characters and the story did indeed have a lot of potential. Also, a lot of movie goers weren't too thrilled with the music in the film; all of the songs were covers of different famous songs such as Mistreated, C'mon Marianne, Three Little Birds, etc, and many said that the songs' arrangements were lacking in originality. On top of all of that, this type of story has been done to death in cinema and it really doesn't bring anything new to the playing field that sets it apart from similar stories. All of these complaints are valid; but I do feel there are some really good points to this film that are actually worth checking out.

I feel that while this movie really is a pretty simple love story and an even simpler fairy tale, it's no where near as terrible as a lot of critics make it sound. The animation, for one, is absolutely beautiful. As with any George Lucas movie or story, the world he creates is not only simple in concept (light and dark) but it's really rich and interesting to look at while the characters traverse through it. The character designs are also pretty impressive; while the fairy characters are the most visually grabbing due to their pretty colors, the movie also plays around with cool, psychedelic wing tricks from the characters which is well worth checking out alone, if just for the sake of seeing interesting animation. Also, the best design, character and performance award all goes to the Bog King. Visually, he is so unappealing he's appealing; you can tell the animation team really went to great lengths for coming up with his design. Also, Alan Cumming

not only brings a hard and harsh air to the character, but he also adds a complexity to him that's pretty fun to watch; and as an added bonus, the man can sing and he probably has the best lines in the movie. While the rest of the characters are pretty fun, hands down, I think the Bog King is the best in the film. If anything, you should check out the film just for him. Also, I thought the songs were rather enjoyable. They were a bit like Glee musical numbers, but I don't think that's a bad thing, as the songs add a little more storytelling to the film, in true musical fashion. 

In final prospective, I would give "Strange Magic" a 3.5/5 rating; while it's really not the most original story we've heard before, it's still worth looking into. While it's no where near the level of "Shrek", "Beauty and the Beast" or even "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for that matter, it's also still not bad enough to be lumped together with horrid animated films like"Delgo", "Norm of the North", "Chicken Little", or "Mars Needs Moms". THOSE movies have a special place in animated movie hell. At worst "Strange Magic" could be in limbo.