Spellbound

While the animation and voice acting was great about half way through I got a sinking feeling that the movie was going to try and pivot hard into a topic that was both poorly suited for this vessel and potentially within the last 30 minutes. And of course it did but instead of being a something that could sufficiently be covered for the childhood audience in 30 minutes it was something much harder to adequately cover. Divorce.

I enjoy animated movies that contain some mature themes but this felt poorly done and the messages in the last few songs and scenes were plain awful messaging for an audience under 10.

The worst part of this is the deceptive omission of this movies content, advertised as a kids movie, but ultimately potentially harmful for children to view without parental input.

Really a shame because there is great talent in the cast and production.

This is a good movie, particularly for families navigating the challenges of divorce. At its core, this film is really about the emotional struggles and complexities that arise in such situations, especially for children. I do wish it had been marketed with this theme in mind, as it's not something we would have chosen as a family if we had known. However, it does provide an opportunity to explore and discuss a child's feelings of anger and confusion when caught between parents. That said, the movie is much heavier than what most viewers are likely expecting. While I enjoy musicals, the songs were unfortunately not very memorable and felt overly long, which detracted from the overall experience.

The story was new but didn't hold my attention. The starting of the story was not captivating, it started off very randomly.

They could have portrayed the struggles of the girl in a better way. Portraying her struggles through songs was more on happy side, it never showed the pain.

The shock for me (and shocking for the princess as well..lol) was the ending. I really didn't except an animation movie to talk about it. No child would want their family to go through that phase, and this director and production house decided it was a good thing to show kids about it. That is the disappointing thing for me.

But definitely, the overall plot of how darkness entangles a person's life and makes them monster is a great plot. If the plot revolved around the main idea, it would have been a great movie.

A sweet film but more so an important topic! There are better animations such as The Wild Robot that also tackles a heavy topic, but I am glad animations like these exist for kids. Give it a chance!

The music is decent and the voice actors are okay, but showing that families do not operate in straight lines or are perfectly constructed, is probably more important for kids to see than an excellent animated production.

Let's celebrate more films like these that are courageous enough to tackle important topics and critique them less harshly. Your kids will enjoy this film and the parents will likely reflect on a few things they could do differently too.

Spellbound may be built on a mix of various ideas from other animated movies however, it also has a fantastic message tucked inside of its fantasy adventure centring on the effects of divorce and how it can threaten to break a family apart. It comes to a satisfyingly mature conclusion and weaves its main message into most of the set pieces along the way which is enough to make up for how clunky the dialogue can be throughout by over-explaining the themes.

Rachel Zegler offers further proof that she can really belt out a tune whilst anchoring the film with an unwavering determination to help her parents. There's a solid amount of fun to be had watching Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem have to relearn human behaviour and John Lithgow is the best part of this. He's fine at first but once he swaps bodies into a much cuter character he becomes the highlight and gets the best musical number.

Vicky Jenson's direction keeps proceedings vibrant and playful, never going too long between musical interludes and despite a run time going towards 2 hours, it's actually nearer to a clean 90 minutes excluding credits. The animation ends up being the middle ground between Disney and straight to dvd with music by Alan Menken that brings some life into the film whenever it's beginning to falter even if all the songs here are forgettable and comfortably some of his weakest.