Spellbound is an unevenly captivating cartoon that is both cloying and confusing.
Not all fairy tales have happy ends, and not all magic functions as it should. Families don’t differ all that much. Spellbound, a Netflix original from Skydance Animation, tries to unite magic and family to create a healing tale that speaks to our day, even though it isn’t the most consistently charming movie.
Princess Ellian (played by Rachel Ziegler) is fifteen years old today. She is trapped in the Lumbrian castle, lovingly caring for the king and queen (Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman), who were transformed into monsters by a sinister spell, even though she should be out having fun with her friends. She has been keeping everything under wraps for more than a year with the assistance of her royal advisors, Jennifer Lewis and John Lithgow, but now things appear to be going south.
The Oracles (Nathan Lane and Titus Burgess) are her only remaining chance. However, this is a curse that cannot be readily lifted, even when she begs them to use their magic key fob to turn back her parents. Before the curse becomes irreversible, she and her parents must brave the perilous trek through The Dark Forest of Eternal Darkness and re-baptize at the Lake of Light.
The design of Spellbound is a seething stew of chimera components, despite the storyline by Lauren Hynek, Elizabeth Martin, and Julia Miranda being quite literal to the point of repetition—a dark woodland that thrives on negative emotions. Everything is mixed together in this vibrant, pastel world: frog and Uber, deer and horse, and cat and bird.
But the tale is only about light vs darkness, thus this interaction of beings doesn’t really affect it. There is never a complement between the tangled ecology and the binary tale. Spellbound balances between cloyingly evident earnestness and perplexing complexity because to its maximalist creature design, self-serious storyline, and divergent parts.
The Oracles’ song has the most enchanted melody, despite the fact that songwriters Glenn Slater and Alan Menken attempt to incorporate winking components into each of their songs. The only characters who appear to have adapted to the ridiculous universe of the movie are Lane and Burgess, whose voices blend together flawlessly and serve as little rays of irreverence amidst the melancholy.