Spellbound review - A Disney Princess Movie for the Netflix Generation – Cheap, Quick, and Forgettable
If Netflix was presented as a film, it would surely be Spellbound — a fast fashion flick with a cheap-looking and forgettable style with the only point of interest tacked on at the end like a 2-for-1 deal you get in the checkout of a Sports Direct. The latest children’s animation on the steamer follows in the footsteps of Disney, this is a Princess tale, following Ellian who is turning 15, upholding the responsibilities of her Kingdom. Whilst her people are unaware, in the first musical number she nonchalantly states her parents are monsters — like actual monsters, cursed after heading into a dark forest. The monster parents are voiced by Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman — whose voices are underutilised here. Bardem’s Dad is indigo and lilac with a fury back, thick underbite with a low attention span. Kidman’s Mum is a green dragon with slick back pink hair so bright Barbie would be proud. Their cutesy design is fairly basic, large rounded and with little in the way of emotive characteristics in a style that looks like the McDonalds equivalent of a Disney Princess adaptation.
The film plays on this role reversal, with Ellian dealing with the weight of a Kingdom in place of her increasingly vacant parents whose large alien bodies run around the castle like newborn puppies, mowing down everything in their way. Something of a metaphor which will come into play towards the end of the film. The Princess, voiced by Rachel Ziegler, is unfairly dealing with the burden of hiding their hideous and potentially dangerous figures from the public, whilst dealing with their responsibilities in their chaotic absence. At the end of the first act, this burden becomes too much as Ellian accidentally lets the kings and queen escape and must go on a quest to the dark forest to save them and transform them back into their ruling figures.
It is a basic but fine children’s film. There isn’t anything to write home about here. Its style is the cheapest of cheap — which should perhaps be expected from a film that has headed straight to Netflix and will head into the vortex of their behemoth swamp of content — although it is in the top 10 most viewed in its opening week. In its breezy nature, it is something that kids will find easy enough to watch for 100 minutes, there isn’t a huge amount that captures the imagination, but there is a certain charm to how easy it goes down — like the child equivalent of a WKD.
It is playing with the tropes of Disney princess tales of the past, but if it is most similar to anything, it is their most recent work Wish, which tries to commemorate 100 years of Disney film but instead is a cheap and forgettable imitation. Indeed, Spellbound is like a Disney film bought on Temu, it might do the job the first time but soon its cheap, plastic, rushed material will crumble on you, like its forgettable and bland style and narrative. To be fair, it does do some basic ideas right — using the songs to push through the boring but necessary exposition, whilst Ellian is an intriguing, if underutilised subversion of the Princess archetype, in one song labelling her as calm and mature. But these are the simple building blocks to which there is no extravagance or flair built upon.
It is completely unremarkable and doesn’t do much unexpected. Its bland animation style completely underwhelms whilst a tacked-on parable about divorce will fly over the heads of its very young demographic, whilst adults are better off dozing off throughout or getting the tea ready. A totally forgettable experience.