O Resgate da Princesa

This little gem, by Animagrad, an animation studio based in Kiev, requires a multi-region player to watch in the US, but is well worth it. The Stolen Princess is very loosely based on Pushkin's early poem Ruslan and Ludmila, itself based on Russian folklore about Kievan Rus. Its visuals draw on Disney films of the past decade, in a light-hearted, hilarious way, with its humor rooted more in character buffoonery than satire. It also depicts plenty of Eastern European/Orthodox themes, giving it a distinctive feel. The animation is a bit clunky and exaggerated at times, but this may be part of a strange effect I hadn't seen before (except in Pinocchio, I guess!)-the characters move like puppets. Despite the war, Animagrad released another movie this year, Mavka: The Forest Song, but unfortunately this doesn't look like it's available in English or released on DVD or blu ray.

I sat down to watch "The Stolen Princess: Ruslan and Ludmila" with my 9 year old son, and it turned out that this 2018 animated movie was great surprise. And I am quite glad that I did sit down to watch it.

The storyline turned out to be entertaining for both me and my son, so the movie has an appeal to adults and children alike. I especially enjoyed it because of its fantasy setting, and there was a lot of fun stuff to be seen throughout the course of the storyline. I've been a fan of the fantasy genre in all manners of media, so I was loving this fantasy setting found in "The Stolen Princess: Ruslan and Ludmila".

The art style and CGI was very good, and I found it to be up to level of what you'd expect from Pixar or Disney. So that was highly impressive and enjoyable, and it definitely added a lot of flavor to the movie.

The characters in the movie were nicely fleshed out and you quickly felt at home in the storyline right there alongside with Ruslan and his friends. And of course the animal companions were absolutely hilarious and lovable. The villain too, of course, was also lovable and being the stereotypical archetype villain that you see in many animated movies.

This being an animated movie, then there was some music and singing involved as well, although not overly done as you'd see in Disney movies. Personally I don't care much for singing segments in cartoons, because that is not why I sit down to watch the animated movie.

The plot is quite cliche for fairy tale movies and it reminds me of Disney's Brave and Rapunzel. However, I'm pretty much impressed by its breathtaking animation (having said that this is the very first Ukrainian animated movie that I've ever watched).

Some of the best animation I have seen, sadly it stops there. If there is such a thing as sliders to regulate things like characters, stereotypes, hand gestures while creating the rest of the film everyone is set to max! Every personality is massively overdone. Every character type is the same, so much so I got to halfway through and left. Honestly, I only stayed that long as I was with someone and was far to embarrassed I dragged them along to this utter pile of whatever. So disappointed with themakers they seemed to have lost the plot. I wonder if they employed a bucket load of millennials a while ago and this is the result?

Am I the only one who feels this film really has a part of Aladdin and sleeping beauty and also the princess looks like Anna from Frozen?

The story is quite simple. When I started to watch this, I didn't have that much expectations. I thought it looks a fine animation. So, I watched it. When the film ended, I feel like it wasn't that good and wasn't that bad.

The reason why I gave 8 stars is because of animation. The animation is great. Although it isn't produced by Disney, it looks like it's production. All in all, yeah, it's enjoyable.