Viewed in
2010
Premise
A princess is born, then cursed to die by prick of the finger, then counter-cursed to sleep when pricked, then hidden in the forest for sixteen years to return home afterward to marry a prince. In other words, not a high concept film.
Liked
The singers, and when the fairies fought.
Disliked
Pretty much everything else.
Hated
The setup-heavy plot.
Thoughts
Of the Disney cartoon musicals, this was one of the most boring.
The strongest part was the singing. I do not know their names, but the voice talent was fantastic. Another part I liked was the funny moments of the fairies fighting over the color of Princess Aurora's birthday dress. Sadly, that was all I liked.
Even for a fairy tale, the story was pretty lame and implausible. That whole setup of the cursing/counter-cursing went on way too long. I could not tell who the main character was, and who I should care about. While she was pretty daunting in dragon form, Maleficent was sadly not as badass here as she was in the Kingdom Hearts games.
This could have been made up if the movie was memorable or funny. I could literally count all the good songs and interesting moments with one hand. In fact, it barely had any musical numbers, and just repeated "I Know You" to the point of insanity. Other than the dress fight, I recall laughing just once more throughout the movie.
I got to say the animation was very weird. The art design was square and flat, and I am unsure if that was intentional or not. Most of the time, I just saw two-dimensional drawings walking between a flat background and a flatter foreground. Having everything exist only in 90 degree angles did not help. Odd thing is, the action and animation were amazingly fluid and natural.
As a kid, I would have hated this movie because it was scary and boring. As an adult, I liked it just as less, with lame story replacing the scary.
What I would change
Focused the story on the three fairies attempting to raise Aurora without their magic. That should have been the heart of the story, and it was literally ten minutes long.
