{"id":17363,"date":"2015-12-02T00:20:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T05:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=17363"},"modified":"2015-12-01T23:40:15","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T04:40:15","slug":"strange-magic-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/02\/strange-magic-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Magic (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"strange-magic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lucasfilm Ltd. and Disney\u2019s \u201cStrange Magic\u201d is another of the many releases in 2015 I was hoping to love going in, but just couldn\u2019t. \u201cStrange Magic\u201d defeats itself before we even reach the second half of its achingly simple storyline, not because of its simplicity and abundantly detailed animation, but because of its constant musical numbers. It\u2019s not enough the characters sing every five minutes, but the musical numbers eventually blur in to one another resembling more droning white noise than characters expressing their feelings. It inevitably begins to feel like the writers are just trying to stretch an hour long narrative in to a hundred minute film.<\/p>\n

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The musical numbers are comprised of whatever Disney could get the rights to. So sometimes we\u2019re treated to a wonderful gem like \u201cThree Little Birds\u201d from Bob Marley, and other times we get \u201cI Got a Feeling\u201d from Black Eyed Peas. It all ranges from catchy to irritating, almost like the writers are purposely testing audience\u2019s tolerance for the bipolar playlist. I wish I could bash the narrative, but its simplicity will likely attract a wider audience as James Cameron\u2019s \u201cAvatar\u201d did. You could easily stop the movie mid way, go back to it a month later, and not have to play catch up at all. Evan Rachel Wood\u2019s performance is spirited as the enthusiastic fairy princess Marianne who is set to wed fairy king Roland. When she learns he\u2019s been unfaithful to her, she grows bitter and hateful toward the concept of love, which somehow transforms her in to a powerful sword wielding warrior.<\/p>\n

Roland hopes to win back Marianne for the purposes of marrying her and rebuilding his army. When singing to her doesn\u2019t convince her that he honestly loves her, he manipulates lovelorn elf Sunny to visit the Sugar Plum Fairy and steal a magic petal from the evil Bog King, which will create a love potion to drug Marianne. Angered by the theft of his petals, the Bog King (Alan Cumming) steals Marianne\u2019s irritating sister Dawn, and threatens to hurt her if the potion isn\u2019t given to him before moon down. While captured, Dawn re-invigorates the Bog King\u2019s idea of love, singing non-stop, and slowly convincing him that love is a wonderful idea. Dawn sings a lot, and seems to use it as torture, though the writers likely intended it as a means of conveying her optimism and unbridled romanticism.<\/p>\n

Much like the Bog King, I eventually couldn\u2019t take anymore and just wanted Dawn to stop singing and soak in the silence for a while. But \u201cStrange Magic\u201d never offers that luxury. When it\u2019s not hammering us to death with pop and rock songs, characters are prone to shouting and screeching at one another, creating an illusion of activity where there is none. The animation is incredible for \u201cStrange Magic,\u201d and it\u2019s armed with very tight direction. I also love fantasy films, especially those about fairies, imps, goblins, and battles of good and evil, but \u201cStrange Magic\u201d just completely botches any potential it has trying hard to pander to audiences. Sans the relentless musical numbers, \u201cStrange Magic\u201d may have been just a sub-par fantasy outing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lucasfilm Ltd. and Disney\u2019s \u201cStrange Magic\u201d is another of the many releases in 2015 I was hoping to love going in, but just couldn\u2019t. \u201cStrange Magic\u201d defeats itself before we even reach the second half of its achingly simple storyline, not because of its simplicity and abundantly detailed animation, but because of its constant musical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,71,99,290,1292,340,349,401,416,1293,580,700,874,885],"class_list":["post-17363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-animation","tag-disney","tag-fairies","tag-family","tag-fantasy","tag-george-lucas","tag-goblins","tag-imps","tag-kids","tag-musical","tag-romance","tag-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17365,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17363\/revisions\/17365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}