Ellian et le sortilège

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.

Wow, it's funny that I went from watching the best Netflix animated series in Arcane Season 2 to now watching one of their most average and forgettable animated movies in Spellbound (2024). Yeah, I wasn't that big of a fan of this movie, but I didn't hate it.

Positives for Spellbound (2024): The animation in the movie looks fantastic. I thought that Rachel Zegler was decent as the main character and while I have my criticisms toward some of the things that she's said, she was good in the movie. And finally, there are some good musical numbers in the movie.

Negatives for Spellbound (2024): This movie is just very forgettable and I am struggling to remember the plot of this movie. Also, why are Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem and John Lithgow doing here, their characters barely do anything in the movie except show up when the plot needs them the most. And finally, this movie has that generic Netflix atmosphere to it, to where I feel like I seen this type of movie from them too many times.

Overall, Spellbound (2024) is an animated movie that exists on Netflix and that's it. Maybe, some people are going to enjoy more than me, but this movie was just whatever for me.

It would have been nice to know that this movie was mainly about divorce before sitting down with my family to enjoy a nice family movie.

The toddler enjoyed the first song or two, but she had lost interested by the midway point, definitely was not paying attention during the climax.

I say midway, but the pacing of this thing was all over the place, so I'm not really sure how far we were in or how long the movie was.. but at some point it took a turn and went from being a movie about a girl breaking the spell her parents are under (like Spirited Away) and dove straight into a "we need a divorce, but its not your fault" movie.

I didn't see anything about this in the marketing, although to be fair I don't know if I say any marketing besides a quick trailer.

It might not have been so bad if this movie hadn't also been so bad, I chuckled at a few throw away lines/sight gags, but that's about it. The plot was weak, the voice acting could have been better, and the animation felt off to me, but I can't quite describe what exactly. The lips didn't feel like they lined up right?

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.

It's been a while since I've seen an animated movie with so many cheesy clichés. Teenage princesses in musicals breaking the fourth wall like it's a Nickelodeon show. After 20 minutes there were already at least 3 or 4 songs, which transform any non-Disney animated film into a bad imitation.

The plot is repetitive, boring, endless with irrelevant events that could have been omitted to leave this feature film at least in 90 minutes.

The final message is interesting, but the journey was too long and boring to pay it the attention it deserved. The visual aspects were good, but there are also details that look unfinished, to say the least.

In short, a forgettable film in the Netflix catalog.