From the early 90s until the late 2000s Disney released a lot of direct-to-video animated sequels. At some point they also began to introduce more original movies with established characters, like the Mickey Mouse Christmas movies, or the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command pilot movie. One of the movies that often gets forgotten is Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams. It does seem to be the black sheep of the Disney direct-to-video movies, first off, it's another "Technically" as this film is over 40 minutes, but less than an hour, secondly, it appears as if this movie was intended to be a franchise starter, so really this should be more remembered, but it as of right now isn't even on Disney+, so is this the worst of the direct-to-video animated movies? Is this the one that was so bad nobody remembers it? Or is it just really boring and forgettable?
Like the aforementioned Mickey Christmas movies, this movie, which I will no longer be referring to by full name because it is long and annoying, is made up of multiple small stories, in this case, two. One for Princess Aurora of Sleeping Beauty fame, and one for Jasmine of Aladdin fame. As usual for package films I'll be looking at both stories separately, starting with Princess Aurora's since her story is first, and her movie is older than Jasmine's. I can't believe I even have to justify such a thing, but here we are.
Princess Aurora's story has her taking charge of the kingdom while her father, King Stefan, is at a conference. It is your standard, "Biting off more than you can chew" story and it is just as boring to watch as it sounds. There is a small conflict where King Hubert, Prince Philip's Father, misplaced an important speech, but that's resolved, and then the conflict becomes Aurora having issues with magic because Merriweather the fairy lent her a wand. You might think she has to deal with something big, like an impending war, or an economic crisis, but she has to deal with paperwork and magical farm animals. Okay, so you don't want to tell anything big that might not be interesting to the target audiences, okay. How about a story where she has to resist the temptation to overuse and abuse magic to solve all her issues, where she learns how to solve problems on her own? They try to give the same lesson about hard work, but she literally chose to read through every piece of paperwork before she signed it, so there is a fundamental flaw in how this story is written. If I could rewrite it, maybe I'd have it so that she calls on the Fairies to do all the royal work while she focuses on the banquet, which leads to problems that she has to solve before everyone returns. So, all the paperwork is signed, and this leads to issues regarding land disputes, because the fairies didn't read the paperwork before putting a magic signature on it. That would be more engaging.
Jasmine's story is also about proving oneself. Jasmine becomes an educator to misbehaving children, and then has to find a missing horse. Okay, mystery of a missing horse, that's a good hook, and the stakes are established. If they cut the educator stuff, this could make for a really good short. It has bonus points for having the late Gilbert Gottfried as Iago essentially riffing the plot as it's happening. He's no Robin Williams, but he's not bad. This story is more interesting than the last, but not by much. The framing device for these stories is also pretty weak, it's just this big castle dedicated to a single storybook with some narration by Susanne Blakeslee. Overall, neither story was very interesting, and I can't imagine this would really engage kids for very long.
Animation wise this movie is mixed. Aurora's animation did not look right to me, probably because Aurora mostly moved in that more realistic way of the classic Disney animated features, where they had a reference for the poses and movements. Jasmine's animation looked better, but with two direct-to-video movies and a TV series, I think it is fair to say that Jasmine can survive with a smaller budget. That being said, Jasmine's story had some distractingly noticeable CG integration, so it wasn't that great either. Unfortunately, the animation was much better than the voice acting, no disrespect to any of the talent in this movie, but it didn't feel like any of them were giving their A game. Susanne Blakeslee is an amazing voice actor, but she isn't given much to do here, and though Frank Welker and Lina Larkin reprise their roles, it's not perfect either. I swear I heard Frank Welker channel Donald Duck at points as Abu. However, the worst was Erin Torpey as Princess Aurora, not that she did a bad job, she is a good voice actor, but the voice just isn't the same as Mary Costa's, and it actually really distracted me. I'm not even a big fan of the original Sleeping Beauty, I think it's just okay, but even I could pick this up.
I can see why this is the forgotten Direct-to-Video movie. It's not the worst, but it is the least. It's the least memorable, least important, probably even the least good. It has important morals, but besides that, I can't see much value in it. The DVD I have actually has a sneak peek for another one of these movies, this time featuring Cinderella and Mulan, but that was never released, and it just makes me wonder why they didn't just make this a TV series? Yes it was 2007, after the debut of Kim Possible and The Proud Family with their strong female leads. However, The Proud Family ended in 2005 and Kim Possible ended in September of 2007, besides I don't know why either of those shows would have to do with not making this a series, I mean, an anthology series about our favourite Disney Princesses telling us smaller scale stories? That could really work, imagine the framing device of them spending time in a big castle, imagine them adding characters like Alice, Maid Marian or Captain Amelia to the mix. There was actually something called "Disney Princess Academy" that was also shelved, you can find concept art online, it seems like it would be a really interesting film or short. As for this movie, it is wasted potential on a bad idea, it is forgotten for a reason, maybe we should keep it that way.
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