Review of Strange Magic (2015) by Greg B — 24 Jan 2015

"Strange Magic" is a bizarre, peculiar animated film about true love that delivers its message with a heavy hand. The story revolves around two adjacent kingdoms, The Fairy Kingdom and the Dark Forest (Harry Potter much?) that co-exist side by side, and whose denizens are forbidden from crossing the boundary into the other land marked by primroses.

The yin and yang contrast in the film- pretty is good, disfigured is bad; light is hope, darkness is devoid of hope is extremely clichéd, and even the romance theme is extremely trite. The fairy princess lives in a patriarchal society where her sole purpose in life is to get wifed up by a handsome prince? Where have we seen this motif before? Hmmmm.

... While the film delivers a good message, it is an uneven mess that never really gets grounded to begin with. The movie tries to become the "contemporary" fairy tale by using popular current songs as the musical numbers, which I found highly unoriginal and quite unremarkable.

I don't even feel the fairy folk did justice to the original artists. The animation in this film is quite bizarre, and some of the creatures that live in The Dark Forest are quite grotesque and appalling.

There are also many flat characters in the film and some that serve absolutely no purpose. I did not see this movie as horrendous; it was just extremely bizarre and not something I would pay to sit through again ------------------------------------------------- C.