The Princess and the Pea

When I first saw Mark Swan's 'Princess and the Pea', I was expecting a short plot less fairytale. Instead, I was treated to a long animated film, with plenty of character development, and much more of a plot than the fairytale I remember. Many of the situations and characters are based on other animation. Homage is paid to Disney film like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and even Black Cauldron. It isn't limited to Disney; one scene is very much like Wonder Works Anastasia, and another like Rich's Swan Princess, with others like Thumbelina. But it all flows nicely. The whole plot has a quiet pace. A smart bird (like Zazu in Lion King?) plays a major part. Plenty of singing. After the first song it was quite good. The animation was quite nice; real feature animation and not TV animation. All in all, a very nice film. Too bad it can't get the exposure it would if it had a Disney label. It may be hard to find, but it's worth it. It makes me look forward to Swan's The Velveteen Rabbit.

For the first 10 minutes of this film, I was expecting nothing more than a cheap, so-so knock-off. Well, the animations still weren't exactly the highest of quality, but they worked. As for the story itself... I was wondering how they could possibly expand the Princess and the Pea to over an hour, and they did by almost making the pea storyline non-existent and instead focusing on another. This film should have been called The Prince and the Peasant, but I digress, titles don't always matter and the story it gave us was actually very interesting/clever. The songs were also quite good. Again, this was just loads better than I thought it would be and ended up being a very enjoyable experience.

When I was a kid, I always wondered why Disney never made a Princess and the Pea movie, and when I found this, it became one of my favorite fairy tale movies to watch. On rewatch as an adult, I can tell it's definitely not on par with Disney, but I'd argue it's still a hidden gem. It's better than the worst of Disney's catalogue, for sure.

The songs are actually good, and the score as well. The villain is pretty fun, and though the plot is a bit silly in retrospect, it's well paced and well done. It's actually quite funny, dramatic, and endearing.

I'm invested in our heroes' journey as they fall in love and save the kingdom. That's more than enough for me.

For the longest time I wanted to see the Princes and the Pea and I have to say after finally watching it's not exactly what I expected. I thought this was a decent film with good music and an intriguing storyline, but I felt it really lacked focus on Daria. She is supposed to be the main protagonist, but surprisingly this movie didn't focus enough on her as it should have and actually focused more on all the other characters who unlike Daria got actual screentime, focus and development. This was honestly the main fault that Daria didn't get more of a role in the film. It's called the Princess and the Pea, but should've been called something else since it severely lacked the actual Princess.

The characters who got the most focus were her love interest, father, villains and even the actual pea itself got more of a storyline and mystery than Daria herself ever did. It's a real shame. The wasted potential of a storyline involving a long lost princess with absolutely No Focus Whatsoever. No one even realized the truth or had even the slightest suspicions until the very end. I also think her love story with Rollo needed more development. I thought they were cute together, but even their romantic relationship was severely lacking. I felt a connection and some chemistry, but their relationship needed so much more work done.

Aside from this I did like all the characters, the songs were unique and quite beautiful and there were several times I did laugh and enjoy myself. Not to mention the action and suspense was exciting to watch and I think my favourite character was the crow. Honestly though I felt this was a decent film at best with a lot of potential, but I won't lie when I say it could've been better.

My 3 sisters and I have watched every Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks and Fox animated movie that our nearby DVD store has. Last night when we were entering the store, my sister said something about renting ''Cinderella''. I told her that I didn't want to watch ''Cinderella'' AGAIN (i don't think that i could stand hearing another ''bibidi bobidi boo'' for the 3rd time this month) and that we should get something that we hadn't already watched, like that one, ''The Princess and the pea''. She agreed eventually, because she knew I wouldn't stop whining if I didn't have it my way. Well, in the end all my sisters loved the movie. The storyline is very nice and the animation good. Not as good as Disney's but much more than acceptable. All in all ''The Princess and the pea'' is a great movie that should have gained more recognition and is way better than many other big labeled animated features such as ''Shark Tale'' and ''Home on the Range''.