The Swan Princess: Escape from Castle Mountain Review; The Hunt for a Plasma Nebula Ball

What is worse than a Disney Sequel? A Diet Disney Sequel! The Swan Princess from 1993, which was reviewed already got FOUR direct to Video/DVD sequel, so since there are four Thursdays let’s review them.

Before we start let me just say that on the spectrum of these movies the original Swan Princess is the best of the movies but as the number sequels goes up the quality gets so much worse. Far more terrible than you can imagine and the original was by no means a Good movie.

The first of The Swan Princess sequel movies is called The Swan Princess: Escape from Castle Mountain. It was released in 97 and had some, and I do mean some a few of the original voice actors   Like I said, of all the Swan Princess Sequels, it’s the best but that isn’t saying all that much. It’s still bad but at least it’s the shortest.

So ever still bland Odette  and Derek are celebrating their anniversary together but Derek as been ignoring Odette and his Mother’s upcoming birthday because some one has been vandalizing and burning things around the castle.  As it happens, Odette and Derek moved into Rothbart hideout from the first movie and Rothbart’s former partner, a dicount evil sorcerer named Clavius wants the Forbidden Arts which is hidden in the castle. The Forbidden Arts looks like one of those Plasma Nebula Ball novelty toys that were super cool in the 1990s.

To get leverage on Derek, Clavius kidnaps Uberta on her birthday. As Derek races off to save Clavius shows up and locks up Odette and learns that Derek is walking into a trap.  While Clavius is dealing with Odette Rothbart old Minion, Bridget and the Pond Pals get to the Forbidden Arts however on trying to free Odette they too get locked in her room/cell. Odette asks Bridget to change her into a Swan so she can warn Derek.

Clavius then gets the Forbidden Arts orb and being a villains wants to take over the world or some stuff nonsense, hijinks ensue and Derek, Odette, and the Pond Pal managed to break to the Forbidden Arts orb and kill Clavius and his minion Knuckles.  Odette however is  still a Swan and Jean-Bob was injured in the fight. Moonlight on the lake fixes them both so hooray.

To be honest this sequels exist in that zone of just mediocrity. There is nothing remotely special or interesting about the movie  in either a good way or bad way. This makes my job ever hard though not impossible, I mean it’s not rocket science or math.

Let’s just take about the only character worth talking about, Clavius and Uberta, the rest are boring and very forgettable.

Clavius is more of less a shadow of Rothbart except Rothbart had a level of interest. What made Rothbart a little interesting is that he had the power to take over but wanted Odette’s kingdom legally. He didn’t want to be a usurper.  Clavius wants power in the orb thing and then wants to take over the world. This is your standard paint-by-numbers villain. All Villains want something and it typically the world. Wanting somethign else would require too much thought. World and power is a easy and lazy way to give a villain motivation.

The there is Uberta, the immature Queen of Country unknown. Uberta was somewhat funny in her demand when she was prisoner but alas that is not why I mentioned her. I bring her up because of her age. You see, Uberta is turing 50 and at first her hates it but then accepts her, at least she gets an arc. But here is the the thing, her character design is the exact same a when Odette was a baby or a toddler. So let’s just say Odette was a baby when Uberta and William had the idea for the marriage pact  and when Odette and Derek were like 18 when Derek said “what else is there” in regards to Odette’s bland personality and the plus a year, that mean Uberta was 31 at the start of the original movie. Meaning she aged prematurely or it was a misguided character design. Things like this take me out of the movie.

Another thing that bothered me, a little because a sane person wouldn’t waste their brain cells think about this movie, is at the end Odette is stuck as Swan and Jean-Bob is either dead or has a massive boo-boo but the question is how did they know the moonlight on the lake would fix things? I guess because it undid Odette’s original spell that moonlight on the lake is the on thing that can undo the Forbidden Arts‘ power?

And another thing, Odette as a swan can talk to Derek! The Fuck? If that wasn’t a issue why couldn’t see either go to the ball as a Swan or fly away from the lake and TELL SOME ONE? I’m willing to believe they just forgot that little plot point of communication.       However I do give this movie a point for giving a plot base reason to turn Odette back into a Swan, spoiler the other ones don’t.

Stupid Sequels

 

I don’t think I have to mention the technicals, but since I already did I might as well. The animation is bad even compare to original which wasn’t that bad but wasn’t amazing either. It’s fair to point that of the four Swan Princess Sequels this one, if you haven’t noticed, is one of the hand-drawn one, and let me just say now they are better than the CG ones, you don’t even know yet. However just because they are hand-drawn the colors are still muted and dull, seems to be a standard look of any off-brand sequel.  They also repeat animation from the first movie, this is standard in the these sequel so get used to it, even in CGi movies they just rehash it.

The songs are SUPER forgettable and I mean that, I can’t remember any of them. There might have been a long song and friendship song but I don’t remember.

Oh and they say No Fear all the time. That I recall but that has nothing to do with songs, unless they did another No fear song.

The best thing I can say about The Swan Princess: Escape from Castle Mountain is that  while its mere existence just shouldn’t be as it added nothing to humanity at least it was harmless and merciful short at just a little over an hour, that’s a positive.