The Swan Princess

Year of release : 1994

Run time : 1h29m

Genre : Family / Musical / Animation / Fantasy

The animation is based on the 1877 ballet “Swan Lake” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

King William finally had a daughter in old age, to inherit the throne. Him and his good friend, queen Uberta, from the neighboring kingdom, who had a son, decided each summer they’ll bring their kids together in hopes they’ll fall in love and unite their kingdoms.

Sorcerer Rothbart has other plans, as he wants to rule king William’s kingdom using magic to take it over.

King William attacked him and banished him off the land (cause that’s what you do with someone with magic powers who wants to take everything you have and k1ll you).

In time, king William forgot about Rothbat, and spent his years taking his daughter, Odette, to the neighboring kingdom to play with Uberta’s son, Derek.

At first, the kids don’t like each other, but as they grow up, they fall in love.

The prince wants to marry Odette because she’s beautiful, and she asks him, but what else? As she wants him to love her for her, but he responded with “what else is there?”.

This upsets Odette, and leaves him, as she wants him to prove his love to her.

Matching her energy, Derek decides to prove his love for her.

Wizzard Rothbat ambushes king William’s carriage on their way back to the castle, as a giant bat, and k1lls the king and guards, taking Odette prisoner.

One of the guards manages to go back to prince Derek’s castle to tell him the news.

Rothbat took Odette to his place, and turned her into a swan by daylight, until she accepts his marriage proposal so he could become king. Odette refuses every night.

Prince Derek starts looking for her, having her father’s words in mind “it’s not what it seems”.

All this time his mother is preparing a ball, inviting all eligible princesses in the world, for him to choose one as his bride.

The animation bored me, but that’s not to say it’s not good. It has a lot of musical bits which are not my thing. I did like the story with the frog who thinks himself a prince, asking Odette to kiss him so he’ll turn back into human form.

 

The animation looks beautiful, and was done in the old fashioned hand drawn cel animation technique, with the help of 275 artists over a span of 4 years!

At the time the animation received mixed reviews from critics, but now it has a 50 score from critics and a 66 score from the audience on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 70% critics score with a 7.1 audience score on Metacritic.

At the time it grossed 9.8 million dollars against a budget of 21 million dollars, being a flop, but it developed a cult following on videotape to the point it now has 10 sequels.

You can watch the full animation on the Dailymotion platform.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9m6n8k

Rating : Could have been a contender !