Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams (2007) - A Forgotten Direct-to-Video Disney Movie, and For Good Reason

 

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.

DuckTales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990) - A fun, if basic, movie based on a fun TV Series.

Last year I posted an editorial about the 2017 DuckTales reboot. Originally I wanted it to build up to this review, however, because I wanted to review Into The Spider-verse in December, and I normally take January off, the actual reveal that I was going to review this movie would have been really clunky. Still, DuckTales 2017 is one of my favourite TV Shows of all time, and the original 1987 series remains a fun, iconic, and significant piece of Animation History, being one of the kickstarts to the Disney Renaissance, which a lot of people forget was also a huge television thing as Disney was producing hit series after hit series around the same time in the Disney Afternoon. While DuckTales has aged, its impact cannot be overlooked, being one of the most beloved Disney cartoons, and having one of the most beloved licensed video games. Which makes it curious that not a lot of people really talk about the movie. Does that mean that the movie is the weakest entry in the DuckTales franchise?

Our favourite treasure hunting ducks find the lost treasure of Collie Baba, but an evil sorcerer steals the treasure and sends them to their supposed doom. However, because this is the Duck family, they survive and escape with a single oil lamp. Unfortunately, this is what the sorcerer, Merlock (Yes that did make me think of World of Warcraft a lot), was after, for this oil lamp contained a genie. So, Merlock and his henchman, Dijon, hunt down the lamp as Scrooge, the Nephews and Webby all make their own wishes. Plot wise, I don't think movie has a lot of surprises, you can probably guess that the henchman is gonna turn on the villain for his own selfish wishes, and the villain will get his hands on the McGuffin somehow, and do I even need to spoil what the Genie's arc is? Still, the plot wasn't sloppy, and it flowed very well. Much like Klaus, the plot is not bad, just predictable.

That being said, sometimes it is fun to watch characters you love going through a familiar plot, probably why so many of these movies based on TV shows are road trip movies... Anyway, these are the same characters we know and love from the original TV show, Scrooge and The Nephews and Webby and Launchpad and Mrs. Beakley. I do wish we got some cameos from other favourite characters, like Gizmoduck, Gyro Gearloose, and hey, the villain was an evil sorcerer, why couldn't we have Magica DeSpell here as well? To be fair, they do add the new characters of Genie, Dijon and Merlock. Dijon, who would in the reboot become Faris Djinn, is not the greatest character. In a post "Trouble with Apu" world I can see this character not sitting well with some viewers, as for me, he wasn't too bad, but I am not in much of a position to make a fair call. I think it might have been that he was not as bad as I thought he'd be, but when you imagine the worst, anything is an improvement. As for the other two, they were pretty fun. Genie is voiced by Rip Taylor, and that is as fun as it sounds. Merlock is voiced by Christopher Lloyd, and it is a Christopher Lloyd performance. He's one of those voices that immediately makes a great villain, up there with Vincent Price and Tim Curry. I will say that Merlock does have his dumb moments, like trying to press an elevator button as a cockroach, when he was alone. Still, he was a fun villain, but maybe not as good as Magica DeSpell or the Reboot's Flintheart Glomgold.

The technicals of the movie are really good, although Disney obviously handed this movie off to a smaller studio, DisneyMovie Toons to be exact, and it does not look as good as Disney's more cinematic movies. Honestly, it is kind of a shame, I would have loved to see this movie be given the same budget and time as something like The Little Mermaid or Rescuers Down Under, but looking at what we got, this movie still looks great. It was released theatrically, which does mean that the animation does have to look cleaner and of a higher quality, but I think it works well enough here, the characters don't look too clean or too well animated to throw anyone off. The music was done by David Newman, who worked with Disney before on Tim Burton's short film Frankenweenie, and also did the scores for The War of the Roses, The Brave Little Toaster and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. It was a pretty solid score done here, well enough that I might pick up the soundtrack if I happen to find a copy.

So with all that you may think the movie is fine, if a little generic, and yeah, it can be. However, the key to any adventure story is the adventure, and I think this movie was a fun and often somewhat intense adventure. The scene where Merlock is transforming Scrooge's money bin to an admittedly absurd evil fortress (seriously Bowser is not that extra) is a scene I actually have a vague memory of one moment from that sequence as a kid, and it being oddly terrifying to me, maybe it was the harsh reds and dark greys. Even then, when the movie is having a thrilling scene, it can be rather thrilling, I can imagine young children would really get into the more intense moments. Even when the movie is not having a thrilling moment and is just having a more mundane and slice-of-life moment, it's still a charming watch. I enjoyed watching the Nephews and Webby interact with Genie, I enjoyed watching Scrooge interact with Genie, I enjoyed these characters in this scenario.

DuckTales The Movie can be a bit of a predictable watch. I will not hide the fact, however, if you can look past that you will find an exciting adventure, charming characters and some wonderful animation and music. I can definitely say that I enjoyed this movie, so if you love DuckTales, love fun adventures, or just want a fun movie to kill an hour and a bit, I can say check this movie out. It's fun, charming and enjoyable, if a little bit predictable. A definite Recommendation from me!