The Swan Princess: A Fairytale Is Born

The original Swan Princess holds a special place in my heart. It may not have an entirely great plot but I've always loved its whimsical storytelling, fantastic animation, and its catchy songs. This poor excuse of a film is anything but that.

It was so painful to watch that I had to skim through nearly the entire movie. When they finally introduced Derek and Odette, I cringed. The character modeling sucks and the animation feels like it was done by someone still learning how to animate. I mean Uberta's hair was swinging around way too much.

Don't waste your time watching it, unless you're doing so for comedy's sake like I did haha.

I put this on for my kids while I fixed dinner so I wasn't 100% watching it but I swear I felt like they watched 3 entirely different movies in one but not in a good way. None of the plot lines are connected in a way that is meaningful. It feels half finished and like this was a highschool project gone wrong. Why does the Queen start off as a 70 year old lady and remains a 70 year old lady for 20 years? Why does the first half of the movie have no talking animals but the second half does? What did this have to do with swan princess at all? Have you seen Disney's animated Cinderella 3? It's worse than that.

Do NOT waste anytime on this film.

I logged in to IMDB solely to drop a 1 star rating and ask, earnestly, did people actually work on this? Or is this the result of fever dream and a ChatGPT prompt?

They never, not even once, mention a Swan Princess. How do you put Swan Princess in the title, and never mention it once?

And let's talk about the bizarre and arguably unfinished animation. One of the main characters never ages, but other people do. Normally productions take the approach of starting with a young character and adding a touch of grey and some extra lines. This production took the approach of using the old version of the character the entire time, including at the very beginning when she looked old enough to be her husband's grand mother. He looked so disheveled that I honestly thought he was some idiot jester that the other kings (yes there are several) listened to his suggestions like he was the winner of a make a wish day.

The single redeeming quality of the film, was that my seven year old daughter and I bonded over the shared "what the hell did we just watch?" experience that this movie gave us. That is something that I am truly thankful for.