The kid’s gonna be fine. It’s the parents who are not all right in “Spellbound,” a straight-to-Netflix computer-animated fairy tale with a smart concept (what’s a girl to do when her home life is shattered?) and its heart in the right place. If only the movie were transparent about its premise from the outset, as opposed to burying the explanation — as a real-world relevant twist — till nearly the end.
The film takes place in the fantasy kingdom of Lumbria, where the royal couple have been cursed. Once a reasonable ruler, King Solon (Javier Bardem) is now a speechless blue beast — albeit the cartoon-cute version of a rhinoceros-size creature, sporting an endearing underbite and an easily distractable, dog-like personality. His wife, Queen Ellsmere (Nicole Kidman), suffers from an equivalent affliction. Gone is the fair-featured matriarch, replaced by a puffy green dragon with flamingo-pink feathers, gold horns and ridiculously small wings.
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“Spellbound” confronts the couple’s transformation from the perspective of their capable teenage daughter, Princess Ellian (Rachel Zegler), who sings “My Parents Are Monsters” right from the outset. It’s a clever way of framing the problem: You might think you have it bad, being grounded or ignored by your guardians, but Ellian’s parents are worse (“like, actual monsters”). For the past year, she’s been dealing with the unfair burden of making excuses and cleaning up messes while her folks are out of commission.
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At this point, if you were to plug your ears and focus on the bright, bubbly visuals, you might think you were watching a Disney movie. And if you were to close your eyes, the music (by eight-time Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken) would surely convince you it was a Disney movie you were hearing.
In fact, “Spellbound” is the second feature from Skydance Animation, the still-proving-itself studio where John Lasseter landed after ankling Pixar. “Spellbound” marks a clear improvement over Skydance’s intermittently charming 2022 feature debut, “Luck,” to the extent that it looks and feels like it could have been made by the Mouse House.
The look says “Tangled,” the feel is more “Beauty and the Beast,” and the result has that uncanny close-but-not-quite sense of having been workshopped so much, it doesn’t ultimately work. Still, you can see what they’re going for — an instructional lesson that’s more relevant to today’s kids than any previous princess movie — and the music’s so strong (especially the main song, “The Way It Was Before”), repeat viewing may solve the problem that the film’s point doesn’t reveal itself until quite late.
The project’s vision belongs to Vicky Jenson, best known as one of two directors on the original “Shrek.” Here, she brings a more reverent but equally modern approach to the animated storybook genre while paying homage to its roots — or at least its renaissance, via the second golden age of hand-drawn Disney animated features, which stretched from “The Little Mermaid” to “Hercules.” What those “new classics” (downright ancient to this film’s target audience) had in common was Menken, who brought Broadway-style songs to the equation.
Those films were all musicals, and so too is “Spellbound,” which would surely be charting a few of its tunes, if only it were debuting on the big screen as opposed to streaming (where “Luck” sold to Apple TV+, this one is exclusive to Netflix). The way Jenson presents the story, what would traditionally be the first act — the lead-up to the curse — is now presented in pieces throughout the film, with the strongest of those memories addressed in Menken’s best new song, ”The Way Things Were Before” (with words by “Tangled” lyricist Glenn Slater).
Nearly half an hour into the film, a drop of water falls on the exposed strings of a broken piano, crushed by one of Solon and Ellsmere’s fights. Five times, it plinks the same string, and then, as Ellian walks past, a series of drops strike six different notes — a delicate, almost Studio Ghibli-esque intro to her poignant lament. Zegler, who both acts and sings the challenging role (where Disney movies often cast two voices), lifts the film in this, its most magical moment, which felt unsure of itself for much of the first act but now takes focus: Now we recognize why Ellian will undertake a dangerous journey to reverse the curse.
Tituss Burgess and Nathan Lane play the Oracles of the Sun and Moon, who read as a cross between mystical monks and benevolent guncles, kind enough to leave behind an enchanted key fob that makes the early going a little easier on Ellian. Accompanied by her adorable pet Flink (a purple, hamster-like critter with big eyes and an appetite for bugs), Ellian is pursued by a pair of Lumbrian ministers — fussy castle adviser Bolinar (John Lithgow) and the more belligerent Nazara (Jenifer Lewis) — who’ve hatched a plan to oust the king and queen and install the princess in their place.
As Ellian flees, sparks fly, and Bolinar and Flink swap bodies. This flip supplies some of the film’s funnier moments, as well as a delightfully silly side number, “I Could Get Used to This,” in which Lithgow warms to the idea of eating worms. (Could this year possibly yield a funnier rhyme than this: “I’ve gotta say, it’s more than marvelous. How did I live my whole life larva-less?”?) So now the film has two spells to un-bind: de-monsterizing Ellian’s parents and restoring Bolinar to his original body.
With no conventional villain, the movie relies on something it calls “the Darkness,” depicted here as a ticker-tape tornado of negative feelings, which threaten to corrupt even the positive-minded Ellian. Rather than spoil what it all means, trust that the eventual explanation is a smart one, with useful lessons to impart about how much kids can (or should even try to) control when faced with drastic family changes. In the end, Jenson’s most radical twist on fairy-tale tradition is the belief that a pat “happily ever after” isn’t nearly as helpful as providing an example of how to cope with unhappiness.
