The Unoriginal Disaster That Is Spellbound (2024)

 

Today I'm going to complain about Spellbound (2024), and boy does it feel like it was made in 2024.

Spellbound is the most, and most obviously, derivative movie I have seen in quite some time. 

Every shot in this movie feels like it was taken from another, well-known movie. There's one at the beginning that feels exactly like How To Train Your Dragon when Hiccup is flying with Toothless, for example. When this is not happening, it is trying to imminante something else while also giving off a wannabe quirky vibe combined with uncanny valley.

It is trying to be too many things too, but being none of them. You're just left with a feeling of weirdness. I'm getting a sense of Secret Magic Control Agency here too, but Spellbound seems to be trying to copy its bad elements rather than what was good about it.

The protagonist feels like a more annoying Anna from Frozen with the body language of Mirabel from Encanto. The creators are clearly trying too hard with this, and it borders on cringey a lot of the time.

The songs feel like Encanto and Frozen rolled into one too. Now, I am really not a fan of Encanto, but at least it has some sort of originality. Spellbound does not. The songs are basically just prose strung together weirdly, and too much prose at that. It literally makes no difference that they are supposedly sung rather than spoken except that it makes the words harder to hear and the emphasis of the sentence is completely lost. The songs also go on for far too long, like double the time they should - or at least it feels like it!

We are also subjected here to the modern type Disney animation aesthetic which has been pushed in farther in the wrong direction. It feels bland to look at, no matter what is put on screen. 

Many of the fantasy elements also felt frivolous, if that's the right word, and just flung in there willy-nilly. Careless world building to say the least.

As a bonus point, I can't really explain why (and this might not mean much if you haven't seen the movie yourself) but it also felt very insulting to child carers. And by that I mean children who act as carers to their disabled parents. It was thoughtless at best.