Strange Magic

Strange Magic is a 2015 American computer-animated musical fantasy film directed by Gary Rydstrom and produced by Lucasfilm, based on an idea by George Lucas inspired by William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The film was released on January 23, 2015, by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures under the Touchstone Pictures label as the first Lucasfilm production after the Disney purchase and the only non-Star Wars film by Lucasfilm Animation. It was his first writing credit since the 1994 film Radioland Murders that is not associated with the Star Wars, Red Tails, or Indiana Jones franchises.

Plot
Bog King (Alan Cumming), leader of the Dark Forest, hates the notion of love and has ordered the destruction of all primroses, which are an essential ingredient of love potions. However, when he meets Marianne (Evan Rachel Wood), a feisty fairy princess whose heart was broken by a philandering fiance, he begins to change his mind. Meanwhile, an elf named Sunny (Elijah Kelley) makes his way to the Dark Forest to collect enough primrose petals for a potion of his own.

Why It's 0% Strange And 0% Magic

 * 1) The plot uses every love cliché you can find in the book.
 * 2) * The "no one loves me because I'm hideous" cliché.
 * 3) * The forced love cliché combined with the love potion cliché.
 * 4) * The romantic chemistry built up via song cliché.
 * 5) * The misunderstanding cliché.
 * 6) * The "I want more in life" cliché.
 * 7) * The "Disney death" cliché at the near end of the movie.
 * 8) The film is unoriginal as it blatantly rip-offs of other movies.
 * 9) * Bog King is a copy of Shrek as he believes no one will ever love him because he is ugly. The misunderstanding cliché said above is also similar to mh:greatestmovies:Shrek.
 * 10) * Roland is a bland version of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.
 * 11) * The elements of the film, such as the woodland creatures being the steed of the ferries, are too similar to the Blue Sky Studios film Epic.
 * 12) The characters are extremely unlikeable and clichéd.
 * 13) * Marianne is just a blatant rip-off of Kayley from Quest for Camelot (a character who isn't any better since she's already criticized for stealing Belle from Disney's Beauty and the Beast 's personality and design) as she's a young girl who desires to be a fighter and gain more out of life. Sound familiar? And even besides that, she's little more than a very unlikable, generic, whiny, and one-dimensional main character, and like she doesn't do anything new or interesting with the "princess who wants more out of life" character archetype (but then again, that trope has been done so many times in movies that it's pretty hard to do something new with it, though it still doesn't save Marianne from feeling incredibly generic).
 * 14) * Dawn is very annoying, stupid, and boy-crazy. The film itself seems to be aware of this while she's affected by the love potion, with Marianna even outright telling the Bog King that she's " a girl who falls in love with every guy she sees" at one point. She also ends up with Sunny in the end after being freed from the effects of the love potion even though she hasn't shown any romantic interest in him before and just saw him as a friend.
 * 15) * Bog King's minions are unfunny comic reliefs.
 * 16) * The Sugarplum Fairy is ridiculous and unbearable and has an obnoxious voice by Kristin Chenoweth.
 * 17) * Sunny is stupid, seeing that he promised to take care of the love potion yet screwed everything up at the ball. He also feels so entitled to Dawn that he's willing to use the love potion on her because he's afraid she won't return his feelings, even though he's never actually asked her how she feels about him. And he never gets any repercussions for his actions and just gets the girl in the end.
 * 18) * Roland, similar to Hans from mh:greatestmovies:Frozen, is an incredibly predictable and moron villain and the twist is just the same.
 * 19) * The Fairy King forbade Marianne from searching for Dawn and his reason is never explained nor justified. And even after Roland cheated on his daughter on her wedding day, and he found out, he's still willing to have him marry his daughter! Come on?
 * 20) The musical numbers are very obnoxious as they're only pop-rock versions of popular hits that are unfitting on each scene, including (but not limited to) "Can't Help Falling in Love", "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", "Strange Magic", and Tell Him", and "Wild Thing".
 * 21) Average yet annoying voice acting, especially from characters like Sunny (Elijah Kelley), Sugar Plum Fairy (Kristin Chenoweth), and Griselda (Maya Rudolph).
 * 22) The characters not only refuse to shut up but also never stop singing. Given how there's a total of 13 musical numbers in the entirety of the film (and just for comparison's sake, the average Disney musical has 6) they come up so frequently that it makes never gives the audience a moment to breathe and even makes them appreciate the songs even less, on top of the songs already being pop-rock versions of hand-picked popular songs.
 * 23) While itself animation is lovely to look at, the character designs of the fairies and elves have an uncanny feel to them. Because similar to Mars Needs Moms, the motion-capture animation for the characters is done in a way that leaves it looking ugly most of the time.
 * 24) When the film attempts comedy, more often than not, they fall flat, or come off as cringey or just plain unfunny.
 * 25) Bog King and Marianne's romantic chemistry is not developed properly as they only begin to fall in love near the end, with only 20 minutes left in the running time. Yes, they were shown to be well suited for each other as they both shared a distaste for sugary, romantic displays, and later started to bond over their respective heartbreaks. But the fact that they end up together in only a couple of hours is still unrealistic.
 * 26) The ending shot, although well-intentioned, moves so fast and is so overloaded with different scenes that it can nauseate the viewer.
 * 27) The post-credits scene where Roland kissing a fly when he's affected by the love potion, his guards are disgusted by the situation and we get a perspective from said fly when Roland starts to place his lips onto it, it's very tasteless, disgusting, creepy, and not very funny.
 * 28) Misleading poster: The poster includes none of the fairies or elves or even Bog King appear on the poster, other than Bog's minions and other background creatures. The only characters that contribute anything to the plot on the poster are Bog King's mother and the Imp.
 * 29) Plot Hole: It is never explained how the love potion failed to work on Marianne, is it because of her true love with the Bog King?
 * 30) The directing of Gary Rydstrom, is poor, considering how he directed the Pixar short film Lifted.
 * 31) Misleading title: Despite the movie titled Strange Magic, there isn't much strange magic in the movie. As love potions, the primary form of magic in the film has already been done before many times and are therefore nothing truly special or original.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Despite the uncanny designs, the animation is splendid to look at, as the visuals were done by Industrial Light and Magic, which also did the visual effects for Star Wars, Indiana Jones (both are also property of Lucasfilm), Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean (another property of Disney), Poseidon, Star Trek, The Avengers, the live action Transformers films, and Space Jam: A New Legacy, as well as the animation of Rango.
 * 2) The Imp is at least a cute and somewhat likable character.
 * 3) Some musical numbers can be enjoyable, despite being very obnoxious.
 * 4) There's one pretty cool shot at the beginning where Marianne and Roland spin around on a flower, with a split-screen making it look like they were one person spinning.
 * 5) Some funny moments, such as "You should see your face" and Dawn singing "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" and annoying Bog King and his minions.
 * 6) It was a sweet idea for George Lucas to make a film for his daughters, despite the idea being poorly executed.
 * 7) *Likewise, the concept of an antagonistic/evil person falling in love with the hero/protagonist is nice although executed poorly also.

Reception
Strange Magic received negative reviews from critics and audiences who criticized its script, humor, and songs but praised its animation. The film currently holds an 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 62 reviews, with the consensus reading "Like most modern animated movies, Strange Magic is lovely to look at; unfortunately, there isn't much going on beneath the surface.". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 25 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". According to CinemaScore, audiences gave the film a grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.

The film was also a box-office bomb, losing around $40–50 million and grossing only $13.6 million against a $70–100 million budget.

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Trivia

 * George Lucas described the film as Star Wars for a female audience stating "Star Wars was for 12-year-old boys; I figured I'd make one for 12-year-old girls." According to Rydstrom, Lucas "really wanted to make a beautiful fairy tale with goblins and elves, and do it in a way that only this company can do. He had been working on it for a long time." Rydstrom mentioned that Lucas emphasized that the story should be about "finding beauty in strange places".
 * On the film's plot, director Gary Rydstrom stated, "We pitched it as a Beauty and the Beast story where the Beast doesn't change."
 * Before The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm in late 2012, production on Strange Magic was already well underway. Rydstrom and his crew screened the film for Disney executives. Rydstrom stated, "We're not Pixar or Disney Animation, so in some ways George was our John [Lasseter] on this one ... I like the fact—not that I don't like advice from all over—but this is our own thing, this is a Lucasfilm project ... I remember when Labyrinth came out and how exciting that was. There was a magic to that, this has the same vibe to me."
 * This was the final animated film to be released by Touchstone Pictures before Disney quietly retired the label in 2018. The final theatrical film to use the Touchstone banner was The Light Between Oceans, which was released in 2016. Universal Pictures replaced Disney as DreamWorks Pictures' distributor, through Disney retained the film rights to these DreamWorks films in perpetuity as compensation for the studio's outstanding loan, with several subsequent series and films based on previous Touchstone-branded properties being released under the Disney name since Disney, has used the 20th Century Studios (formerly 20th Century Fox) and Searchlight Pictures (formerly Fox Searchlight Pictures) labels for mature content, following the acquisition of the bulk of 21st Century Fox in 2019.
 * According to Deadline, postmerger, Fox Searchlight, now re-branded Searchlight Pictures, enjoys a lot of autonomy in the Disney empire, greenlighting pics they know and operating their distribution, publicity, and marketing teams. 20th Century Studios (which recently dropped the Fox) was melded into the bigger Disney fold, fusing all its operations.
 * This was the last blockbuster budgeted film by George Lucas following his semi-retirement in 2012.
 * However, George Lucas is returning as executive producer of Indiana Jones 5, with director Steven Spielberg stating "I would never make an Indiana Jones film without George Lucas. That'd be insane.".