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chuckroA fairytale princess ends up in modern-day New York. Hilarity ensues.
Jethrien and I were looking for something relatively mindless to watch on Friday and looking through the Amazon streaming catalogue, and I noted that I hadn’t seen this. It was fun and relatively mindless, indeed. I think my comments sum up to a few bullet points:
• It is very odd to watch this shortly after seeing Into the Woods, especially the recent movie version, as they play with a lot of the same tropes. This definitely takes a softer touch, though.
• The opening screams “Disney Princess pastiche” so loudly they can hear it on the moon.
• Amy Adams holding a live fish in her mouth—for a sequence that could be cut from the movie with no impact whatsoever, it’s really inconsequential—is a testament to her dedication to her craft.
• The musical sequence in Central Park when Giselle magically gets everyone into it and Robert’s all, “Wait, he knows the song too?” is glorious.
• Having Idina Menzel in a musical movie but never having her sing is a crime and should be illegal.
• For that matter, Nancy and Edward’s happy ending could have been much better foreshadowed by adding about two more minutes of Idina on-screen and developing Nancy’s character. I don’t think that would have been too much to ask.
• That, and I feel fairly certain there’s a scene on the cutting room floor of Prince Edward paying for various things with solid gold coins. (Jethrien thought there was a plot hole in how he paid for lunch, the hotel room, etc. This is such an obvious fix!)
• 6-year-old Morgan seems to be left alone an awful lot. The scene where Giselle takes her shopping was particularly egregious—who had been watching her before that?
• Narissa’s sudden ability to break the fourth wall and monologue about narrative structure when she turns into a dragon is strange and feels out of character. Honestly, that climax didn’t actually work very well for me—I realize that they set up a lot of it and it kept with the theme of “fairytale rules keep working in the real world?” but it felt hackneyed in a way much of the film (impressively) didn’t.
Jethrien and I were looking for something relatively mindless to watch on Friday and looking through the Amazon streaming catalogue, and I noted that I hadn’t seen this. It was fun and relatively mindless, indeed. I think my comments sum up to a few bullet points:
• It is very odd to watch this shortly after seeing Into the Woods, especially the recent movie version, as they play with a lot of the same tropes. This definitely takes a softer touch, though.
• The opening screams “Disney Princess pastiche” so loudly they can hear it on the moon.
• Amy Adams holding a live fish in her mouth—for a sequence that could be cut from the movie with no impact whatsoever, it’s really inconsequential—is a testament to her dedication to her craft.
• The musical sequence in Central Park when Giselle magically gets everyone into it and Robert’s all, “Wait, he knows the song too?” is glorious.
• Having Idina Menzel in a musical movie but never having her sing is a crime and should be illegal.
• For that matter, Nancy and Edward’s happy ending could have been much better foreshadowed by adding about two more minutes of Idina on-screen and developing Nancy’s character. I don’t think that would have been too much to ask.
• That, and I feel fairly certain there’s a scene on the cutting room floor of Prince Edward paying for various things with solid gold coins. (Jethrien thought there was a plot hole in how he paid for lunch, the hotel room, etc. This is such an obvious fix!)
• 6-year-old Morgan seems to be left alone an awful lot. The scene where Giselle takes her shopping was particularly egregious—who had been watching her before that?
• Narissa’s sudden ability to break the fourth wall and monologue about narrative structure when she turns into a dragon is strange and feels out of character. Honestly, that climax didn’t actually work very well for me—I realize that they set up a lot of it and it kept with the theme of “fairytale rules keep working in the real world?” but it felt hackneyed in a way much of the film (impressively) didn’t.
