For many teenagers they regard their parents as monsters and in Netflix new animated feature, Spellbound, they really are monsters. Princess Elian (Rachel Zegler) is fifteen years old wanting to fly around her parents kingdom with her friends on what look like flying beaked hamsters but it’s the royal consul Bolinar (John Lithgow) and Nazara (Jenifer Lewis) who are keeping the Queen Ellsmere ( Nicole Kidman) and King Solon (Javier Bardem) out of sight making excuses to the courtiers and the General (Olga Merediz) of their armies for them being unable to see them in person. But patience is wearing thin as to why they can never see the King & Queen and inevitably, like Harry & Megan, the monsters escape the Palace and the secret is out as the General and her army set out to hunt them down and banish them from the kingdom.
Princess Elian would become Queen Elian and it’s not what she wants. What she does want is her parents back in human form and salvation comes in the form of a pair of gay oracles who advise how the spell can be broken and her parents returned. Its all that Elian needs to instigate a journey across the kingdom with her parents in monster form joined by a body swopped Bolinar with the heroine’s cute sidekick, a creature that gobbles anything like a child friendly version of Katie Price.
Produced by ex-Head of Pixar John Lasseter and with musical numbers by Alan Menken this adheres to the Disney template – the young heroine on a mission to save the day, the regular outburst of song, the cute sidekick pet and so on. Despite Menken on song detail there are no earworm tunes here as is so often the case with modern day musical but its story’s modern day subtext that strikes home best – the child who becomes a carer for their parents and in turn missing out on a normal childhood – will ring true for children in such a scenario themselves .
Helmed by Vicky Jenson, (whose previous include the original Shrek film way back in 2001) there are some really nice throwaway touches – a giant frog with a pine tree air freshener in its mouth, the Palace’s Head of Pigeons carriers covered in droppings – and the animation is more in the style of Disney’s output than of Pixar’s. Ultimately it’s a celebration of the value of the family unit but though it’s perhaps a little overlong there’s enough here to keep children entertained if not actually Spellbound.
related feature : Chris Hemsworth pays homage to Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime
related feature : Chicken Run Dawn of the Nugget – reviewed here
Here’s the Spellbound trailer …….
