I was nine when I first George Lucas' magnum opus "Star Wars". It not only opened my eyes to exciting and fun characters as well as a very imaginative creative world, it essentially sparked my interest in film, and made me appreciate story and characters more and more. It became one of my favorite movies of all time which is just sad considering he went from making that film to the annoying thing that is known as "Strange Magic". And when I say annoying, I really do mean annoying. It's unbelievable how much this film shocked me. How did the man that make "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" give us this? No, wait. I take that back. This is from the man that also made "The Phantom Menace" and "Howard the Duck". Why am I not surprised? Oh, just wait till I give you my full thoughts on this garbage. It's going to be really fun.
In a world of magic and fantasy exist two kingdoms split between lightness and darkness. The darker kingdom has been hunting down primrose flowers down mainly because it is known for creating a love potion which the evil Bog King (Alan Cumming) hates. Meanwhile, in the lighter kingdom, a fairy princess named Marianne (Evan Rachel Wood) has had her heart broken by the handsome warrior Roland (Sam Palladio) and through very rushed character development has promised never to love again. Wanting to win her heart back, Roland asks an elf named Sunny (Elijah Kelley) to find the captured Sugar Plum Fairy (Kristin Chenoweth) to make a love potion hoping it could win over Marianne's heart back. After retrieving the potion, things don't go according to plan when the potion accidentally gets sprinkled on Marianne's sister Dawn (Meredith Anne Bull) who is even captured by the Bog King who orders the kingdom to get the potion back before moon down. So, what happens after this? You can look up a plot synopsis on the internet to figure out the rest your self because I just want to rip into this disaster.
At first, I will admit I did get slightly into the story at first due to its interesting ideas and my love for fantasy. However, the film completely loses all hope of survival after we hear Marianne sing "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You". In fact, I forgot to mention that this film was a jukebox musical that has a lot of songs. And I really mean, a lot. By the time we got to the third song, we weren't even fifteen minutes into the film. In fact, want to know how many songs there are in the movie? Thirteen. Yeah, you read that right. Thirteen! An average Disney movie has about six or seven. Speaking of Disney who now owns Lucasfilm, you could really tell that they did not want to have anything to do with the movie, and it obviously shows. They released this film under their Touchstone banner, did little promotion of it, and only released a trailer about two months before the film was released. Isn't that ridiculous? I honestly don't blame them for wanting to get away from an annoying story and annoying characters. Yeah, let's go over the story as well. It's easily the worse thing in the entire movie. The film's theme of love was so obnoxious and all over the film that it drove me crazy. I also hated the rushed character development the film had with its characters, particularly Marianne. She initially starts off as a cute princess at the beginning of the film and is shown to be unable to use a sword then after her heart is broken, she sings this stupid musical number, changes her clothes, and is instantly a rebellious fairy. No training is shown whatsoever and we don't even know how she even got good at it because the film didn't take the time to explain. The Bog King was also terrible considering that he actually sang that he was evil. I put my hands on my face as soon as I heard that. I mean, this is terrible writing! No villain just goes out there and says he's evil. He does what he does because he believes it the right thing to do when it's really not. The only praiseworthy elements I can give to this film is the animation. It looked so stunning and beautiful that I was even angered even more that it was put in a film like this.
"Strange Magic" is just an annoying picture. The story, characters, songs, everything about this film annoyed me. It's such a shame that George Lucas went from being one of the most influential directors of all time to a total joke. If there's anything that this film will be remembered for, it's as the nail that sealed the coffin of George Lucas' film career shut.
