STRANGE MAGIC (Gary Rydstrom). 99 minutes. Opens Friday (January 23). Rating: NN
Where to watch: Netflix, iTunes
Strange Magic, much like 2012’s Red Tails, is what happens when George Lucas hands some ideas to his friends and tells them to make a movie.
This time around, his instructions appear to have been “how about a CG-animated take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream about elves and fairies and bog monsters who all fall in love with each other while singing dad-rock standards?”
And so we get this bizarre musical where a rebellious fairy princess (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) turns her back on love after a bad match, only to find herself falling for the nasty Bog King (Alan Cumming) after a botched love-potion incident leaves her sister (Meredith Anne Bull) besotted with the guy, who, it turns out, isn’t so nasty after all.
It doesn’t make a lick of sense, and if kids are the target audience, they won’t get much out of the only-sort-of-appropriate playlist, which tries to build a jukebox musical out of ELO, Bob Marley, Elvis, the Four Tops, Queen and such. There is a pretty clever use, though, of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance as a marching chant.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
