The Swan Princess (1994) (Movie Review)

   The 1990’s was the time of the great Disney renaissance, when some of the most beloved Disney animated movies of all-time were being released. Also at this time, several other animated studios like Warner Brothers, Amblin Animation and Don Bluth studios tried desperately to bank the success of those movies by replicating the same winning formula. Most Disney imitators from the 90’s were lousy, lacking the magic that made those films so great. However, there were a handful decent non-Disney animated films that came out around this time, and one that I remember fondly growing up with was the 1994 animated motion picture titled “The Swan Princess”. Even though this wasn’t the most original animated, non-Disney movie, it at least captured a sense of that same Disney magic fairly well, and I still have a soft little Nostalgic spot for it.

   “The Swan Princess” is based on the classic fairytale “Swan Lake”, and slightly based on the ballet of the same title. It was distributed by a company called “Turner Home Entertainment”, which mostly specialized in home video cartoons, so this was a big project for them. The Director of the movie was Richard Rich, who had just left the Disney studio to run his own animated company called “Crest Animation Productions”. Richard Rich was involved in a number of animated Disney movies from the 1970’s and 80’s, in fact he’s probably best known for directing the 1981 Disney classic “The Fox and the Hound”, which is personally one of my favorite Disney movies of all-time. So this guy had a pretty good resume before he took the job, and he certainly knows how to direct an animated phantasy, giving it a magical overtone, and making every shot in the movie a colorful spectacle. The film also provides a talented cast of voice actors including John Cleese, Jack Palance, Steven Wright and even Sandy Duncan, who coincidently also did voice work in “The Fox and the Hound”.

  Here's the set-up, a king and queen from two separate kingdoms want to join their lands together, and the best way to do that is through marring their children. Instead of forcing them to marry, they make the young princess named Odette meet the young prince named Derek every summer in hopes that they will fall in love over time. 

At first they’re annoyed by one another, but naturally they form a strong bound by the time they become adults. Full of blind love, the prince wants to get married right away, but our princess wants to make sure that he loves her for who she is and not just because she’s beautiful. When she asks him, the prince gets cold feet, and can’t find it in himself to give her a proper answer. Feeling ashamed, he goes through an internal struggle to understand his genuine love for her. Before he can get a second chance to redeem himself, the princess is captured by an evil wizard, who aims to use her in a plan to rule the Kingdome. To make sure she never escapes, he places a spell on her that keeps her human as long as she’s on the grounds of swan lake, and if she leaves, she’ll transform into a swan. From that point on we meet colorful characters, battle monsters, sing some catchy songs, and all the good stuff you’d expect from an animated fairytale.  

   While the relationship between the Princess and the Prince isn’t especially captivating, it’s the concept of them trying to understand their love for one another that makes it work. Most movies have the prince and princess falling in love automatically, but in this film, there love is genuine, but they need to discover why it is. This pays off fairly well in the end, and the two characters do share some genuinely sweet scenes together. It isn’t nearly as strong and something like “Beauty and the Beast”, but it works just fine. Prince Derek gives a bad first impression as one who can't look past a woman's beauty, but he gets better, and is a lot more active than most animated prince characters. Princess Odette on the other hand honestly outshines most of Disney’s classic princesses from the 60's. She’s active, she’s smart, she has a sweet voice, she doesn’t complain about her status, she has an excellent design ... it’s everything you’d want from an animated princess and more.   

   As you’d expect from the casting, Jack Palance supplies the voice of the villain, an evil enchanter named Rothbart. While Jack Palance is an awesome actor, and delivers a classy evil voice, the character himself is nothing special. He’s a generic antagonist, with your basic goal of marrying the princess, and taking over the Kingdome ... but again, Jack Palance in the role makes him worthwhile. Some of his magic powers are really cool, and he even has a fun monster form, which is I'll have more to comment on at the end. On the more negative side, his villain song titled “No More Mr. Nice Guy” is one of the stupidest villains songs I’ve ever heard. I'm sure if I look hard enough, I could find something more annoying, but still ... on it's own, this villain number is needlessly long, an overly colorful presentation, and some really stupid lyrics. You can only take a villain so seriously when he sings ... "I intend to eat their lunches".   

  Thankfully, the supporting characters in this film are wonderful. John Cleese and Steven Wright supply the voices of our comedic duo, a frog named Jean-Bob, and a Turtle named Speed. I love these two, as they balance off each other so well with their unique personalities, and antics. I’m not even a fan of Steven Wright, but his dry reads fit the role of a turtle so well, and it’s hard not to love John Cleese, as he’s one of my favorite comedians. There’s also a Puffin character, who can be funny at times, and contributes as the brains of the group. All three are enjoyable to watch, and the situations they get in are a lot of fun. There’s a scene when our swan princess is being held captive in a flooded dungeon, and it’s up to our three hero’s to find a way to break her out. What follows is one of the wildest and most entertaining scenes in the film, as our trio battle ferocious alligators and swim though Swan Lake in an effort to save their captured friend.  

  The pacing in the film is decent, with a very strong start, and a satisfying third act, although the middle act admittedly slows down a little. There's also some inconsistencies in the plot that I found a touch distracting. For example, Princess Odette has a father named King William, who along with his Kingdome are introduced as very important to the film. Without warning, the king is killed about 18 minutes into the movie, and no-one seems to be that bothered by this, as all the characters just go on their marry way like he didn’t matter. No one talks about him, even the Princess never mentions her diseased father once throughout the film. It just kept eating at the back of my mind, doesn’t anyone care about this dead king, and isn’t anyone going to talk about this. We never even find out what happened to his Kingdome, and that’s a huge problem, because the villain’s whole plot is to take over said Kingdome, but we never see it again, and for all we know, the whole realm went under after the king died ... the movie is just really vague on those details.          

    

  It’s also very obvious that many of the scenes in this movie are directly inspired by other Disney movies, with "Sleeping Beauty" being the most direct in several scenes. The climax of the movie is practically a cut in paced of the ending from Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty”, as we have a princess who falls in a sleep like death, a prince riding out to save her, while slashing his way though lots of sharp trees, a villain who transforms into a giant winged monster, and it even wraps up with our hero slaying the monster by impaling it through the heart with a sharp weapon. Now to be fair, it’s still a fun monster fight, the creatures design is cool, and the final scene in which the prince finally understands his love for the princess is genuinely touching. I’d even go so far as to say that this movie has the stronger epilogue then Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” did. 

  As for the source material, I’ve never actually seen the “Swan Lake” Ballet or listened to the music from that Ballet, so I don’t know for sure how much of the music is original or made for the movie. I will say that I loved the instrumental soundtrack in this film, as it’s all very subtle, relaxing, and fits the film very well. The songs in this film, for the most part are actually quite good. Most of them felt like actual songs you’d hear on a Broadway show, while others felt like footnotes from the studio. 

The opening song titled “This is my Idea” is like a 15 minuet long, set-up musical number, and it’s all conveyed fairly well through some really up-beat music, as well as great character expressions. Other songs like “Princesses on Parade”, and “Practice, Practice, Practice”, have their catchy melody's, but feel kind of pointless in the long run. One of the more clever musical numbers is titled “No Fear”, which is provided by our three fun animal friends as they go on a little min-adventure, which also helped movie the plot forward. My favorite song by far is the duet song between our Prince and Princess titled “Far Longer than Forever”, which was nominated at the Golden Globes. I swear, if this film had been released under the Disney banner, this song would be put amongst some of Disney’s best musical numbers. It’s so simple, yet so uplifting, and it conveys that exact same feel that most of Disney’s popular hits convey. Finally, the most popular song associated with this movie is titled “Eternity”, and performed by a group called Dreams come True, who apparently were really popular at the time. The song itself is good, and it gets one heck of a music video to go along with it, filled with some really creative props and elaborate sets.

   The animation in this movie is honestly some of the most appealing that the early 90's had to offer, before all the digital effects took over. Right from the opening title card, this film is very colorful to look at, with lively and vibrant details all through-out.  

While the plot is nothing out of the box, this movie definitely succeeds at just being a satisfying experience. I really like this world that the film creates, l love looking at all this colorful hand drawn animation, I enjoy listening to the songs, and I do like most of these characters. It may come off as average to a lot of people already familiar with this Disney style formula, but there’s nothing that bad about it either. It’s kind of like ordering an ice cream from a common ice cream shop, you know it’s not going to taste any better or worse than every other ice cream you’ve ordered, but you still enjoy it, and it leaves a good taste in your mouth. Holy cow, after all these years, I think that was my very first food analogy.     

   At the time of its release, there was a lot of publicity surrounding this movie, and while it bombed at the box office, it was a success on the home video market. So much that over the years, it’s grown a fan base, and those of us who've grown up with this movie still have some nostalgic fondness for it. There's even a long running, direct to video series, which is still turning out new releases today. I remember watching the first two way back when, but haven't had any inkling to re-watch them, and I never saw any of the newer films. I still can't believe this series made it to Christmas special status ... that's unbelievable. 

   To sum things up, of all the Non-Disney movies that have tried to recreate the traditional Disney formula, this is arguably one of the better films. In fact, there was another animated movie that came out that same year by Don Bluth titled “Thumbelina”, which was kind of a lousy movie by comparison, and a shameful attempt to cash in on Disney’s successful movies. While “The Swan Princess” isn’t a masterpiece by any means, it’s at least a decent film, with some splendid animation, memorable characters, and plenty worthwhile musical numbers. Despite trying to be the next big Disney movie, it can at least stand on its own as a worthwhile film. If you’re fond of that same formula that made Disney’s animated movies from the 90’s so great, you’ll probably like this non-Disney movie just fine.

Thanks for reading my review of the 1994 animated picture “The Swan Princess” ... and continue to enjoy the movies you love!