Spellbound

This movie claims to be for kids, but the heavy focus on divorce feels out of place. Sure, kids' movies can tackle serious topics, but this just feels awkward.

The story components and settings are all over the place, like someone asked an AI to come up with a random plot and threw it on screen without bothering to connect anything. There's no real backstory. It's hard to care about the characters or their world.

The music? Completely forgettable. Nothing catchy, funny, or even worth admiring-it's just there.

In the end, it feels like a mediocre "B movie" with a big-budget animation makeover. The visuals might be nice, but the rest of it falls flat. Definitely not worth your time. Not a top 100 kids movie, not even one of the better ones on Netflix let alone anywhere else. Definitely don't plan a family movie night around this.

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?

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.

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.

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.