Birthday movie review: Spellbound

(courtesy IMP Awards)

We all want a happy ever after.

But what about if that happy ever after doesn’t quite work as you think it will; what do you do then, when expectations are dashed, even if it’s in a good but different way?

That’s the great dilemma facing Princess Ellian (Rachel Zegler) near the end of Spellbound, when she is confronted by the end that the curse affecting her parents can be reversed but that not everything will simply go back to the way it was (all for reasons that must be left to the watching of this enchantingly funny and charming new animated film).

It’s a gutsy move for what is essentially a riotously comedic romp through a twisted fairytale where a force known only as the “Darkness”, which arrives in tornado-like whirls of thick black rope-like substance and which feeds on negative energy, has turned the Ellian’s mum and dad, King Solon and Queen Ellsmere (Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman) into literal monsters.

Granted they bound around like very big kittens and love chasing laser-like lights (well, as laser-like as a medievalesque fantasy will allow) and they tend to toss around palace personnel like chew toys – amusingly, their attendants wear the equivalent of sumo suits, leading to some very cute visual gags – and they are coloured in vivid purple and pink, but they are monsters all the same, and quite incapable of doing the business of running the land.

Not that anyone knows they are out of commission, beyond trust court functionaries such as Minister Bolinar (John Lithgow) and Minister Nazara Prone (Jenifer Lewis) – the latter is incredibly accomplished and yet somehow, in a witty commentary on misogyny and the gender pay gap, gets paid less than her male colleague – with all the pressure of keeping the kingdom ticking over falling to a willing and mature but clearly exhausted Princess Ellian.

She wants to just be an ordinary teenager but until the curse can be lifted, and it’s been a year already with no soon of monster-transforming wand being waved, she’s stuck with a lot of pressure, a big pressure and the loneliness of having lost her family, at least as they once were.

The ticking clock in Spellbound, and it uses it well to send Ellian, her monstrously oblivious parents and her pet furry gerbil-like creature known as a Flink often on a fun and revelatory road trip, is that the king and queen need to revert to their human form soon or they’ll forever be stuck that way.

So, no pressure then?

With the fateful pronouncement by the two, quite possibly a cute, forest-dwelling couple, Oracles of the Sun and Moon, Sunny and Luno (Tituss Burgess and Nathan Lane respectively) ringing in their collective ears, the movie switches to a race across the quite magical kingdom of Lumbria, which involves a battle through The Princess Bride-sounding Dark Forest of Eternal Darkness, to reach a mountain to pool of light which will fix everything.

And while that’s true, that’s where this unexpectedly unorthodox, subversive gem decides to depart from the beaten path of many animated feature films.

While many of the tropes and clichés are well and truly present and accounted for, and vibrantly so, from cute animals to hopeful teens to witty, meta dialogue, Spellbound pushes the boundaries quite a bit in its messaging which doesn’t promise that you can flick a switch and suddenly everything will be okay again.

In fact, while the magic does its thing just fine, what’s really at issue are the king and queen themselves who have to confront what it is that led them to be so negative as to attract the “Darkness” in the first place, and how the one thing the magic can’t fix is who they intrinsically are, alone and as a couple.

That’s pretty daring because what most of these movies sell is the idea that magic and dogged perseverance and true belief can fix everything, and the fact that that may not be completely true, injects a grounded reality into the story that, far from leaching the magic of an unalloyed happy ending, actually gives Spellbound some rather wonderful emotional heft.

That’s pretty cool because not all animated films really knock the emotional impact out of the park (save for Pixar which almost routinely do it without trying).

Not a bad thing always; sometimes all you want is some fun, escapist animated entertainment.

But as the Toy Story and Inside Out series have shown, there is an appetite out there for films that deliver some real emotional impact, and while this reviewer is not suggesting that Spellbound is in that league, it does get the truthfulness about how tough some situations in life can be, even when they ostensibly end on a happy note.

And that, quirky humour and lush animation aside, is what really makes Spellbound so good to watch.

It is buoyantly filled with catchy, if not quite top tier songs by Alan Menken – they are delightful but not as catchy as his output on films like Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast – and its characters are hugely likeable and the storyline full of just the right amounts of balanced hope and tension, but it’s that final act, where a curve ball of reality is thrown and impressively well, that its full import makes itself plain.

We have our happy ending but one that acknowledges the impact of internal pain and trauma and which beautifully and empathetically acknowledges that you can’t just flick a switch to return things to exactly where they were because too much has happened in the intervening period to make that possible.

It’s this injection of humanity that adds a whole new level to this spirited, funny and sweetly oddball film and which takes what might have been a beautifully made but somewhat run-of-the-mill animated film and gives it something wonderfully extra, which ultimately elevates it and makes all the fun and gags worth it with an emotional payoff that a cut above the animated ordinary.

Spellbound streams on Netflix.

Music featurette

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