Are We Going to Let Our Kids Make a Divorce Themed Musical Cinema? Exploring the NPR cut connected to the new Netflix spellbound project, it seems that is the thought that pushed the creation of it alongside with seeking to ask the followers this. In juxtaposition to words portrays the film in a more favorable light than the piece of junk luck that the 2021 model spewed out. But they really go overboard with the token jazz overture covering tunes with their somewhat spectacular voice acting. Alan Berken throws in some humoristic songs to accompany his captivating performance. This work primarily appears to be unsatisfactory and one is left wondering if it was ever supposed to be anything else but another piece to be in the background during the holiday sit downs with the family after which the threshold would be buried deep within Netflix’s algorithms.
Ellian, the princess of the imaginary kingdom Lumbria, is voiced by none other than the stunning Rachel Zegler. In the beginning of the film, her parents, Queen Ellsmere (played by Nicole Kidman) and King Solon (played by Javier Bardem, “Being the Ricardos” reunion!) get transformed by a spell into some non lethal yet troublesome monsters. This context gives authority to Minister Bolinar (John Lithgow) and Minister Nazara Prone (Jenifer Lewis) by becoming their guardians. Ellian hires a couple of Oracles (Tituss Burgess & Nathan Lane) which allows her to embark on a risky journey that traverses the Lumbrian empire with her monstrous parents.
The strong belief that there are no repercussions when parents become mentally scarring monsters to their children during a divorce, this idea creates a subtext but goes on to highlight the monsters called Ellian and Mark in between the developments of the movie that make Ellian question her existence and what she has done in the world to deserve such treatment. The constant consumption of ‘darkness’ for these fights builds upon an idea which went unchecked prior, that divorce has nothing to do with her and maybe reminding the parents watch to treat the children better.
Unquestionably, these are important messages that any movie should be able to communicate (check out the greatly improved version of it in the film “Where the Wild Things Are”), however this is mostly all that “Spellbound” has to offer in terms of its story. None of the characters serve outside of their ideological role, and there is hardly any world-building to be found here. The palace grounds are reminiscent of AI generated interpretations of the worlds from the movies “Frozen” or even “Wish”, lacking any essence of their own. Only a little creature later voiced by Lithgow (when Bolinar is placed into his body) displays some sort of uniqueness in its character design. It concerns one of the very common issues in contemporary CGI animation that is so mechanical that has forgotten about the heart.
It prompted me to consider more forgiving takes on “Spellbound” which would have faith in their youthful audience. There’s the Studio Ghibli take which gets a bit more surreal considering Ellian and her monster parents are in an actual world for this, being an enthralling anime in comparison to this movie. Then there’s the Pixar interpretation which considers feelings such as divorce on a more complex level than this film does. The DreamWorks version is probably even more comedic. This kind of consideration definitely violates the first rule of critiquing a movie only to think about the other options you don’t have. But then again, that is what happens when a movie is unable to enthrall the audience as much as the word suggests.
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