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Reviews
The Swan Princess: The Mystery of the Enchanted Treasure (1998)
This Swan is an Ugly Duckling :P
The very thin plot is a rehash of the previous film, involving another betrayed accomplice of the original villain, Rothbart - this time, a witch named Zelda - trying to get at some magic left in Rothbart's old castle...which our heroes are inexplicably living in.
The original three animal sidekicks are still the closest this series has to memorable characters. Speed the turtle and Puffin the puffin are OK, by virtue of their cool voices. Jean-Bob the would-be frog price is tolerable. Every other character in the film is annoying - bickering, whining and generally acting like jerks - except the titular princess, Odette, who can't muster enough character to be anything, including annoying.
Each film in the trilogy involves Prince Derek being wrong and having to find a way to make it up to Odette - she is, as one character states, "always right." This makes Derek an unlikable idiot and Odette dull and one-dimensional.
A bird named Whizzer joins the cast. Picture Fife from Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas on massive amounts of sugar and helium. He fills the role of "reluctant villain's accomplice" that seems to pop up a lot in these direct-to-video films. And for some reason, the whole first scene is about him.
There's a lot of fluff about a festival, including a talent show and an obstacle course. There's also a romantic subplot of sorts for Lord Rogers (or as I call him, Grimsby Cogsworth), that goes nowhere, save for killing more time with a long musical number.
The animation is passable - Rogers actually looks a little less creepy in this one - but it says something about the budget when they re-use the title card (and its fancy effects animation) from the original film.
I suppose children or adults who remember it from their own childhoods might like it. But there are much, much better animated films out there that also feature princesses in pretty dresses, animal sidekicks, scheming villains and musical numbers - and actually know what to do with them! :)
Home on the Range (2004)
Cow Pie
Great stylized visual design, reminiscent of old cowboy cartoons like "Pecos Bill" and "A Cowboy Needs a Horse". Unfortunately, the movie is sunk by the kind of weak, haphazard, gag-oriented storytelling that also marred many forgettable features from the "CGI glut", like another Disney release, "The Wild".
The trio of cows are like the sidekicks from a real Disney movie, shoved into the foreground. Much of the film focuses on the bickering between Maggie (Roseanne) and Mrs. Calloway (Dame Judi Dench), which is less funny and less interesting than the bickering between "Beauty and the Beast's" Lumiere and Cogsworth - and they were supporting characters.
The only good guy who really captured my attention was Buck, a comical misguided would-be hero horse, because he was the only one who seemed to have any small trace of the kind of drive that made heroes like Ariel and Aladdin so memorable.
The villain, hypno-yodeling cattle rustler Alameda Slim, has nothing on Jafar or Scar, and his trio of identical bumbling henchman ("Uncle Slim, Uncle Slim, Uncle Slim, Uncle Slim, Uncle Slim!!!") are among the weakest Disney characters of all time.
Not to mention that despite this being promoted as the return of Alan Menken, the man who wrote most of the memorable tunes from the Disney Animation Renaissance, his songs are played in the background, a la Pixar and Dreamworks films, rather than performed by the characters. The songs are catchy and are one of the better-working components of the film, but still, seeing Menken's name attached to it, I thought this would be the return of the animated musical. Only one song is performed on screen, by Alameda Slim - the silly "Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Adle-Ooo". Apparently, for some reason, Disney thought that characters breaking into song was so "uncool" that it could only be used as a gag.
I'm very hopeful about the return of hand-drawn Disney animation with "The Princess and the Frog". I'm glad this wasn't really the last one! :)
Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (1979)
Unnecessary backstory, overcomplicated plot
A concept with potential, and it was fun to see these two holiday icons together, but...
Rudolph's glowing nose didn't require the "explanation" offered in this film - much like The Force in the Star Wars films didn't need the explanation of "medichlorians in the bloodstream." But mainly, the film left me cold because of Winterbolt's over-complicated plot to destroy Santa. He's got the power to put suggestions into people's minds, so why does he do things in such a roundabout way? Breaking the magic of Rudolph's nose, framing Rudolph, threatening to melt the Frosty family...The comedically exaggerated plots of Pinky and the Brain and "Phineas and Ferb's" Dr. Doofenshmirtz (which are done that way on purpose and played for laughs) seem simple and straightforward compared to Winterbolt's, which we're expected to take somewhat seriously.
There is a particularly (and amusingly) strange moment when a character throws her two guns at the bad guy, like boomerangs. I understand if they don't want to have guns being shot in a family film, but then why have guns in the first place?
The Pebble and the Penguin (1995)
Dreadful
Hubie -- like Stanely the troll from Bluth's A Troll in Central Park -- lacks the spark of personality to be the main character that carries an entire movie. We're supposed to like him because he's nice, but that's about all he is.
His character design is unappealing. The top of his head is a sort of dome that is narrower than the pudgy bottom half of his head.
And penguins should not have teeth. I know that Iago the parrot in Aladdin had teeth, but maybe that worked because it made him look more like his voice actor, Gilbert Gottfried. Hubie, with his weenie little voice (provided by Martin Short), looks funny with that big set of chompers in his beak.
Tim Curry, who is usually delightful at being evil, does some sort of dippy surfer dude accent as the villain (might have been a good voice for a comic relief accomplice, not the supposedly menacing main villain).
The entire plot revolves around the hero and villain's love for female penguin Marina, who is just as dull as both of her suitors.
Worst of all is the pacing. We keep cutting back to the villain to watch him threaten Marina some more - this time in dialogue, this time in song...
Barry Manilow may be a great songwriter, but in animated films like this and Thumbelina, his songs feel limp and listless - especially the ballads. The only song I liked was the 1930's-ish "Good Ship Misery" song.
I read that the distributor made some cuts in this film against the filmmaker's wishes, and that could have caused some of the problems - though I suspect the real problem is that they didn't cut the rest of it ;).