La bella durmiente

I remember the Jetlag productions with fondness, and Sleeping Beauty was one of the ones that I had vivid memories of. Re-watching it as part of my quest to re-visit the Jetlag, Golden Films and Burbank animations, my memories were mostly correct. The animation is quite good here, the backgrounds are colourful and the character designs especially that for Odelia are an improvement over those of Alice in Wonderland for example. The music score has many lovely whimsical moments, and I loved two of the three songs, Follow Your Heart especially is very sweet. The story is always charming in its tone, and the dialogue likewise without feeling overly-simplistic(again like Alice in Wonderland). Most of the characters are likable too, the best two being Primrose and Princess Felicity, both endearing and never annoying characters. That is not to say that this Sleeping Beauty is perfect though. Just Keep On Going is actually a good catchy song, but would've worked a million times better without the narration(which completely drowned out the last part) on top of it. I didn't care also for the character of Prince Richard, for me one of the Jetlag's silliest and more empty characters. Finally, the voice work while again far more emotive than Alice in Wonderland is inconsistent, the best cases were Aura and Amoratta, whose voices are fresh and charming, Felicity is suitably soothing and Primrose's high pitched voice worked for me. Odelia also wasn't too bad, the character herself is well animated and the dialogue is good, but there were times when the voice didn't quite fit the character, coming across as too nice. I didn't care for Melody, whose voice was more annoying than beautiful, or for Richard whose voice was just as bland as the character. Overall though, a cute Jetlag animation. 7/10 Bethany Cox