The Secret of the Hunchback Esmeralda; 5% Sassy, 25% Standard Princess, & 70% Snooze Fest

The Secret of the Hunchback’s Esmeralda is what I always want in an Esmeralda and it makes me mad that she is so boring.

This Esmeralda is nice, likes dancing, generally pretty for the art design and execution of the animation but she also sassy. She really is like a fucking Disney princess, I mean she spins and sings about wanting more from life. Which is exactly what Princess Yum Yum did in Arabian Knight or The Thief and the Cobbler whatever it’s called. And while I do like these traits there is nothing going on under that puffy hair.

This Sassy Disney Princess type is what I think Esmeralda at her basic level should be for this kind of movie fair as it blends the Disney movie and the book.  However she is so bland. The most she does is says she was arrested for dancing, all sense of an interesting character is given away and then throw away in that one tiny line.

In the movie, Esmeralda is in league with these thieves and she dances as distracting. If you believe her little song, which why wouldn’t this movie isn’t complex, kindergarden math is more complex than this, but from her song she tells up that  she wants more out life. She is the arrested and made captive by Lord Frollo. She give Quasimodo water because she is nice and then Pierre Gringoire saves her. They fall in love  and she then gets kidnapped by Lord Frollo again and is forced into marrying him for why I don’t know. Quasimodo save her and that is it. At no point does she ever says how or why she teamed up with her companions. Ar they her family? We don’t know she hardly even talks to them and she doesn’t seem like them so yeah let’s just go with family.

The thing with Esmeralda is that in the book at least her shallowness and childishness  makes her interesting, it gives her a weird sense of a complex character. She is not a nice angel she in other versions. Being a nice character in a movie isn’t interesting because the creators want the audience to like the character they present.

As it Esmeralda in this movie has no sense of character because she has no growth, she is static and that makes her boring. Her only line about her dancing is one line and it not enough that they rest of screen time is just a nice pretty lady being nice and pretty. They are local commercials with more adevance character arcs.

I don’t hate her character because there isn’t anything to hate or like. Even her costume and design is a major yawn.

Next Time Frollo

Follow thehunchblog