The Swan Princess

There was a specific period of time when every animated movie that was coming out wanted to be exactly like Disney. While most animation companies nowadays have made distinct identities for themselves through distinct stories, characters and visual styles, Disney was one of the originators of animation, and was a popular gigantic brand that every other company would’ve pinned after. DreamWorks was created specifically to be a challenge to Disney which led to a lot of similar films to theirs being released concurrently, animation legend, Don Bluth fell into the trend when he made Anastasia distinctly similar to a Disney flick despite being the man that use to rival Disney, and sadly Warner Brothers was the worst offenders of this problem despite the company having a decent previous track record in animation that made them quite different from Disney, even as earlier back as their original Looney Tunes cartoons being more stand-up vaudeville than the artistic peaceful nature of most Disney options. While they made movies like The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones and Cat’s Don’t Dance, a movie like Quest for Camelot definitely showed their Disney-envy and started showing they were willing to suppress their stronger and more defining elements if it meant they could get a grab of the gold. Clearly this was a consistent problem and the movie that arguably suffered the worst from it was the 1994 animated film, The Swan Princess. After being arranged to wed as children despite clearly hating each other, princess Odette (voiced by Michelle Nicastro) and prince Derek (voiced by Howard McGillin) finally grow to love the other once they become of age, but Odette wishes for him to love her for more than just her looks and doesn’t seem to think Derek views her as anything more than a beautiful face. After departing, Odette is captured by a banished wizard named Rothbart (played by Jack Palance) who places a spell on her which forces her to turn into a swan whenever moonlights hit the lake she’s trapped in. Wanting her father’s kingdom but only able to achieve it through marriage, Odette is stuck waiting for Derek to discover where she is and is forced to rely on a french frog named Jean-Bob (voiced by John Cleese), an Irish puffin named Lieutenant Puff (voiced by Steve Vinovich) and a turtle named Lorenzo (voiced by Steven Wright) in order to reach him. Originally distributed under New Line Cinema before Warner Brothers bought them out for the sequels, and coming out during a time when Disney hit its biggest renaissance, Swan Princess feels like Disney leftovers with very little identifiable elements that help stand out as its own thing.

Based on the German folk tale version of Swan Lake written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the similarities this movie has to other Disney movies from character designs and personality, animation quality and choice of subject actually make more sense considering that the director of the movie, Richard Rich, worked for Disney previously by helping direct films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron before being fired and forming his own production company, Rich Animation Studios, to fund the project himself. Already containing a former Disney brain at the head, you can feel where all the tropes and familiar qualities come into play when making this movie, whether it be the pretty royal leads who barely share screen time and chemistry but are just drawn to their natural good looks, the evil villain who despite limited screen time is given a heavy amount of personal baggage with the leads, a bountiful amount of comic relief who probably get more attention than necessary, the pretty animation, the song numbers, even the fact that its origins stem at least somewhat from a classical fairy tale basis, it all connects back to how Disney map out their movies. With this in mind, the film is actually at its strongest when it feels incredibly unlike most of Disney’s work, as the opening few minutes are actually fairly well handled, delivering a familiar situation of royal children set to be wed, but are actually quite bratty and detest the other from the get go. Matched with a pretty good song and much more violent and harsh imagery that gives off a more slapstick heavy environment and tone, it felt like it would be a different take on a Disney-esque formula and provide something a little more unique, yet it quickly retracts into that exact formula once the characters grow up and adopt familiar traits. As the story written by Rich and Brian Nissen, it gets more predictable, safer, and much more recycled to the point where that distinct almost ‘’Warner Brothers’’ style gets incredibly diluted. You can start to recognized character designs, animated sequences and even full action scenes that mirror other Disney movies and it only makes the problem worse as it brings nothing new to these familiar elements. What makes this even worse is that despite getting plenty of attention from a marketing perspective, these Disney elements are so watered down and poorly developed that most of the section dedicated to them like the villain and the romance are kept to the side in exchange for a ton of moments dedicated to comic relief side characters whose only purpose is to waste time. The movie does benefit from its safe nature and familiar formula as it works for wonderfully inoffensive junk food for kids. It’s something they can recognize and doesn’t have anything distinctly odd enough that would make them question any faults, which is most likely why it had such a huge success on the small screen, but it can be a little mind-numbing due to the script not providing any moments that feel surprising, engaging or different in the slightest. It raises questions that never get answered, create twists that have no surprise, and create and resolve conflicts that barely feel addressed come the end of the film (Odette says Derek only sees her as eye candy, saves her without getting to know her at all, and suddenly things are better).

The characters either range from overly exaggerated cartoonish supporting roles or caricatures that just scream of being diet Disney. At first, Odette and Derek feel like they are on the right direction to being pretty different from your usual prince and princess duo in animated form, like growing up as bitter enemies, having designs that look a little frumpy and even normal given the genre, and even the idea of questioning their love for each other as mere attraction rather than true love given being their past history.  This stuff is all great, but due to the movie’s need to match a formula that is profitable, Odette and Derek are given next to no personality once they get older and the story gets going. They are written as so bland and lack so much personality that it honestly makes the previous comment about ”loving only for looks” all the more apparent given that’s all that it feels like. The voice actors are fine, their singing voices are okay, and their designs (despite being obvious knock-offs) aren’t bad copies (although Derek has a few awkward facial expressions), but during an era where Disney was at least trying to make their heroines and male love interest have a little more than just looks, these two stand out like sore thumbs. The villain is pretty weak with a generic backstory and motivation, awkward design and personality, and even Palance’s delivery can be pretty odd to listen too, its just an all-around mess of a character who clearly has Maleficent envy, just without any of her graceful character and memorability. As mentioned before, the side characters take up way too much screen-time with their slapstick as it feels like what this animation company is better at handled as oppose to the slower Disney style. Most of Odette’s animal sidekicks are pretty annoying, bland, and even weirdly casted, with actors that almost feel like they were chosen to specifically play against type (having the perky upbeat turtle voiced by low-voiced depressed-sounding Steven Wright, and having a French frog voiced by the distinctly British John Cleese is just extremely odd).

The movie’s look feels like the softer, calmer energy that would come from a typical Disney movie especially in the way certain backgrounds and colors are handled, but a lot of the character designs feel distinctly made to fit into a more Warner Brothers style of movie. They have a lot more bounce and stretch to their looks, which allows for more exaggerated expressions and movements, and while that would work fine in a slapstick-based environment and movie, they don’t fit into this ”trying to emulate Disney” atmosphere, or a story where the main characters feel more solid and structured with a sense of weight and purpose. It leads to a ton of overused comic gags that never once get a laugh and feel like diminishing returns from other cartoons that were too hastily written to be placed in anything else. Despite that issue as well as a few choice facial expressions that are hilariously awkward, its still a pleasant looking movie with nice colors and lighting, and has a richness that could fool people into believing it is a Disney film, but it just needed to find a balance between its two styles so that it could properly work as a distinct film.  The music handled by David Zippel is also something that was clearly shoved in as a lot of the musical numbers have no purpose outside of the movie feeling like it needs to have songs in it to function properly. On the one hand, the opening number is a pretty catchy and enjoyable song; the lyrics are memorable, it has this great fun energy in it, it’s a pretty hummable tune and it sets up a lot of great elements that never come back later on. Also, the love duet ‘’Far Longer than Forever’’ is a perfectly fine song on its own, but the jumbled melody, aimless lyrics, and lack of any chemistry between its lead prevents it from being an effective love sonnet. Most of the others are just throwaway songs meant to waste time on characters that have little identity or purpose outside of one-off gags, and it just slows the film down.

Despite its failure at the box office upon its initial release and considering it had to compete against The Lion King in cinemas, it seems to have found its specific audience as its managed to turn itself into a direct-to-DVD franchise with over ten movies in its line-up. Despite the movie’s faults, that doesn’t seem too unbelievable as, even though its pretty lazy and unoriginal, it’s also incredibly harmless and doesn’t do anything that would keep kids away from it. Its biggest issue for why its so bad is because it feels like a carbon-copy of a Disney movie and wasn’t allowed to create its own identity. It leaves the story feeling confused and shallow, the characters bland and forgettable, the animation pretty yet misguided, and the music being pointless and unmemorable. This isn’t a terrible movie, rather just a horribly forgettable one that unfortunately suffered from Disney-envy. Even ignoring how much of the story doesn’t really take advantage of original source (which is VERY un-Disney like), there’s unfortunately not much love lost from this one.