ANI-MOVIES, *The Swan Princess

Richard Rich was not the similarly named comic character, but an ex-Disney animator who formed his own studio in 1986 called Crest Entertainment. Most people know them nowadays as the original animators behind Alpha And Omega which spawned off several sequels even after they closed their doors in 2013. One of their earlier productions was inspired by Peter Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake titled The Swan Princess directed by Richard Rich. This was released in theaters by New Line Cinemas to little applause, however its home video release gained the film greater praise which led to franchise consisting of a dozen movies some of which eventually were animated in CGI as opposed to their original hand-drawn style. It’s hard to say what caught the eye of audiences back then except it was back in the haze of Disney’s renaissance which was brimming with fairy tale princesses and was just used to satiate kids while their parents ignored them. Crest did a reasonable job on the animation, but there were just so many copy/pastes of Disney material that made this so wafer-thin that it’s a bland concoction of zany madcap filler material. There are too many additional supporting characters, human or animal, that the main leads are practically transparent. Not to mention that none of the songs would ever end up in anyone’s movie soundtracks playlist.

Princess Odette is raised to be forced friends with Prince Derek who both can’t stand each other until they both finally pass puberty and achieve hotness. Derek now wants to marry her, but only because she’s foxy now, so Odette disses him to end up getting kidnapped by the evil sorcerer Rothbart. Odette is now cursed to turn into a swan at Rothbart’s castle accept when the moon is out when she can change back. Odette’s animal friends help lead Derek to Rothbart’s and discover Odette’s secret, and the two of them plan to break the curse. Rothpart learns of this and plots against them with Odette dying of the curse, although she somehow survives with the curse being lifted and Derek killing the powerful warlock with a simple everyday arrow.

How this low effort production gained more sequels than most slasher flicks is one of the greatest mysteries of our time. It doesn’t contain any of the majesty of the original source material, least of all the music, and is full of buffed-out cartoon gags solely meant to cash in on Disney’s princess mojo. At least when animators like Don Bluth tried to keep up with the fairy tale theme in movies like Thumbelina there was some effort put into it, but Richard Rich’s attempt is a disgrace to Tchaikovsky’s legacy with infinitely contrived cliches and a limited budget that only kicks in for Odette’s magical girl transformations.