Spellbound

3 outta 5

Spellbound is a film by Skydance Animation that was released exclusively on Netflix that is trying really hard to emulate the singing Disney princess animated formula. And it kind of succeeds! It may be a bit basic copy and paste in some places, the wistful princess with a cutesy animal sidekick, transformative magic, and lots of singing. But there are some nice moments of emotion here and a few good laughs. Like a lot of Princess animated movies, there’s a couple of life lessons about growing along the way, even if the result does feel a bit like a slightly off-brand, not legally Disney type of film. Also, the song “My Parents Are Monsters” is a full-on banger that could have crossed over into mainstream appeal if the movie wasn’t banished to Netflix.

Princess Ellian (Rachel Zegler) is having a rough time on her birthday as for the last year her parents, King Solon (Javier Bardem) and Queen Ellsmere (Nicole Kidman) have been turned into monsters and are constantly wrecking the palace as she tries to keep it under wraps from the public with the help of the palace servants and Minister Bolinar (John Lithgow) and Minster Nazara (Jenifer Lewis). Eventually, Ellian contacts two Oracles (Tituss Burgess and Nathan Lane) and they say she needs to follow a magical light to regain her parents’ humanity. On the road with her monster parents, they slowly start to regain their speech, although it is a tad disconcerting when Bolinar does a brain swap with Ellian’s little cute furry worm pet. With a dark magical storm that feeds upon negative energy appearing, the crew sets out to turn the King and Queen back into humans but the revelations about why the turned may end up breaking the family, and kingdom, apart for good.

The movie has the tone of the modern Disney Princess films. Even though it has singing and emotional growth, there are still silly comedic tangents. There is a gag about the Royal Postmaster who sent out a legion of birds for messengers and they ate cursed barriers that turned them all into stone, except for one. That bird then turns into stone and Ellian accidentally breaks it in half. It is a gag that slows things way down that usually don’t fit into speedily paced kid adventure flicks, but it is funny. There are a few kinda dumb gags here as well, like one of the first things the monster King says when he gets back his voice is to proclaim he must “Release the liquid from inside his body!”. And some corny but amusing bits like how the two sages made their magic in a key fob, and one of the sages asks the other “Why not just use the six wands we have?” and the other sage says, “Because they’re cluttering up the coffee table!” Later, Ellian steals it and starts pushing buttons randomly as spells go awry.

The musical score is by Alan Menken and company who are veterans of Disney classics like The Little Mermaid so it nails that sweeping vibe accurately. Ellian’s song about her monster parents is a great tune about how aggravated and overworked she is trying to keep the kingdom together while her monster parents are rampaging around the palace. There’s a bunch of fun visual gags in the song like when she is in a high tower with two cardboard cutouts of the King and Queen pretending to still be human, or when her monster parents eat the food off her plate, and she gives them an annoyed look. There is one song about the Minster turned animal who enjoys the gross food of some little critters which frankly seems like filler, giving the wacky sidekick their own starring comedic song, which happens a lot in these musical animated films but it’s a bit of a miss even with elaborate staging. But the final few songs where Ellian has an emotional crisis about her parents has some dramatic bits.

Zegler as Ellian has a very emotive and expansive vocal performance and the animation of her character compliments it well, with a lot of funny expressions and moments sprinkled throughout. The fact that Ellian has a little cute animal sidekick is a cliché that feels mandatory. When it comes to the singing, Zegler impressively knocks out the tunes. Bardem and Kidman as the monster parents play really dumb when they get their voices back and they become more expressive as it goes on, and they can emotionally sing at the end. As the Minister turned cute animal sidekick, Lithgow is a properly hammy performance like he is totally fed up with this entire adventure. The movie looks great with cool visuals like when the bad emotion storm wraps people up, or an awesome visual bit when singing happily causes glowing floating clouds but yelling angrily creates red streaks of painful lightning. There isn’t much of this explained aside from “magic cave,” but it looks cool.

While on the surface, Spellbound may feel like an off-brand Disney Princess Musical Knock off, there are a few interesting tweaks, like how the King and Queen eventually end up is something that isn’t usually in these types of films. This may not add anything new to the genre, but it knows how to stay in its lane.