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movie review - Spellbound

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Kokubunji, 2024.11.24

I watched this for movie night with The Girl, now aged 12. It's an animated movie about a kingdom whose regents are ensnared in a spell (hence the title) that turns them into big, cuddly, dumb monsters. This thing has a lot going for it, with engaging animation, great voice work, and a plot that in broad strokes keeps things moving. There are some clever scenes and there are likeable characters which is itself saying something these days.

But The Girl had the whole thing -- and I mean the whole thing -- worked out within twenty minutes. I don't know quite how to say this but the movie didn't seem to have the courage of its convictions, veering away from real stakes and real issues and real confrontation at critical moments. Also, it suffers from way too many of the adults in the room acting like imbeciles, giving rise to a feeling like Frozen in which a girl around my daughter's age has to save the day. By the time some of the key adults do act, their actions don't make a whole bunch of sense.

In short, I found myself regretting this selection. I know they can't all be Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, but let them be better than this.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner