Had I not learned that this was by LucasFilm, I would have thought it to be an indie project, mainly because it has the quality of something that would be DTV [direct to video], like many of the CGI-animated film DVDs Walmart usually sells as “exclusives”. I do like the message they do seem to be going with… “finding beauty in strange places”, but it could have been a bit more appealing. Either way, I think this is a shot to the foot. Boys may like the “ugly” designs and fantasy-like setting, but not the fact that this is a “fairy tale”; girls may like the “fairy tale” aspect and the possibility of a romantic story, but get turned off by the designs of the main characters; and, parents obviously won’t take their kids to something they don’t wanna see [hence why “Paddington” might become the surprise hit of early-2015 instead of “Strange Magic”].

Despite the fact that I do like variations on the tales of the Bard in animated form, I think that the unappealing character designs will cause me to save my money for a cheap DVD rental of this flick, just to see if everything else about this movie can make me see if there truly is beauty beneath the ugly exterior.

Who knows, they might have waited even longer if it weren’t for the wild rumors that “Strange Magic” is the title of a Frozen sequel. That sure got everyone’s attention, so they were forced to spill the beans earlier than intended, quite possibly. It’s also quite possible that releasing it at all was a line item on their agreement for acquiring Lucasfilm, and if it weren’t for this they might have canceled and buried it. One way or another, nobody dumps a movie like this for no reason.

Now, hopefully we’re all wrong and the movie is a lot better than its ads indicate. This wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened. For example, Frozen’s teaser neither contained actual footage from the movie nor represented the movie in any way, and its first, main trailer made it look like a very different movie than it turned out to be by using bits of footage out of context and adding stuff like music of a completely different tone and style–we didn’t get a real sense of the movie at all until the “First Time in Forever” trailer (AKA the Elsa trailer) was released online only about a month before the movie’s release. Then again, it was fairly obvious that the advertising was deceptive in that case, while Strange Magic’s trailers and other ads seem more representative, unless this is all deleted footage. This and the dumping of the movie don’t give me very high hopes, but if the movie is actually much better, then I’m sure that we’ll hear about it.

For now I’ll sing along with the choir and say that it looks absolutely awful, at least from what I’ve seen of it so far–nearly as bad as an animated feature can look, except for the rendering. It’s right down there with Delgo, and the only thing worse I can think of is Food Fight. Yikes!

And why blame it on Disney? I thought the initial announcement was that this was George Lucas’ departure from the Star Wars stuff and his project alone. Sure Disney might be distributing it but they didn’t have an exact hand at creating it.

This project has been troubled from the start, and while this is not unusual for an animated feature, sometimes projects that still aren’t coming together well are pressed into production anyway, with predictably disastrous results. I don’t know what really went down in this case, but Rydstrom said “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,” which would appear to indicate that it was NOT as committee-driven as other projects he had worked on before with Pixar and John Lasseter. This was George Lucas’ baby, it seems, and I for one consider him perfectly capable of producing crap.

The most likely scenario is that when the finished movie was screened again for Disney executives later on, they all agreed that it should get the Touchstone label to help protect Disney’s reputation and that it should be dumped in January with minimal fanfare.

You’ve got your cash-ins that are obvious money grabs like Turbo or Cars 2, and you’ve got your big fancy films you know will sell tickets like Brave or Frozen. But it’s THESE, the wild cards that you just never quite know about, that make walking into a theater without watching any trailers or promos extra exciting. Can’t wait!

But I will try to keep a positive outlook and hope for the best. I think I’m more excited for the Good Dinosaur than Inside Out to be honest. On the other hand I’ll be re-watching the 2014 films when their out on blu-ray and iTunes because they’re just that great.

Except Nut Job, that movie still looks bad to me.

Anyway, this movie looks awful. It certainly won’t be spending my time with this one.