Review of Strange Magic (2015) by Smoky B — 18 Aug 2017

It should be known that many animated movies are weird, and often become cult classics later on for varying reasons, good and bad. This movie is actually already on its way to gaining a following (under good reasons), and if you want to know what all the hubbub is about, at least watch this movie once without this score in mind.

And I'm not kidding btw, there are numerous tumblrs, fan fiction, incredible art, etc. already devoted to only this movie, and all of its characters. People of every age have been touched by this movie it seems.

Why people love it, who knows? (To each their own) But for me, I actually enjoyed it. It was good music and a nice retelling of a classic tale that we don't often get from that genre of 're-dos'.

PLUS all in the character dialogue and fantasticly subtle animations- especially the facial ones! All of them were more humanesque of an irl reaction than I've seen in a while of Disney animations. Although a comedy, there is certainly no reliance on cartoon cliche expressions here, but rather a memorial to realistic awkward-love ones.

And as one reviewer said, watch movies that go off the beaten path. You never know if you'll find a new favorite and it'll encourage new ideas and combos to flourish. ( haha, who says you can only have one faerie movie? :d ).

What you should know:

Like many animations, you should walk in knowing its a musical, as that helps aleviate 'sudden singing syndrome'. But I am frankly impressed how they used many of the songs, putting them into such a complex story and some unimaginable situations. The original words and tone are included and resung by actors/singers, so not much botchery too.

Only other thing to note is early on is you may feel oddly towards character proportions/style but rest assured this is not another uncanny-valley design. There is a method to the madness, I swear!

It's a minor adjustment to style that you'll quickly overcome by render quality, scene lighting and awesomely when they're body types are physically involved in character development and choreography. So by the end of the movie, you may never be able to re-see what was odd to begin with.

As for the low score...some backstory:

Personally I don't think the scoring here is reflective of movies that are projects of love, like a chunk of animations are. (Compared to adaptations and paid franchises).

This movie was foremost a romatic comedy but also a muscial! Made to express Lucas's daughter's fondness for fairy tales and his personal favorite "summer of love" songs. He then applied them to the story of Mid Summer's Night Dream, a story of love that he happened to love. This combo then became Strange Magic, a dubbed movie "love letter to his daughters".

Who wouldn't want to give their kid a fairytale story as an actual movie?

Oddly, the movie was completed as LucasFilm was being bought by Disney. They only released it because it was already complete, and have noted it's not considered a 'Disney movie'.