Getting this out of the way first because everyone who knows me is sick of me talking about this: I wish it were made in Korean. By all means use the English dub but I want a Korean movie to be made in Korean, this goes for all the other territories and their respective languages.
OK, second of all: this movie is not weight negative or body negative. This movie has problems but being in the wrong philosophically is not one of them. This movie has a message that is good enough. Don't let the bad marketing bias you too much. Are you a larger person? I think you'll like what this movie has to say.
And finally we make it to the actual movie:
At first glance, this seems like just another Shrek; those movies that you never remember having any kind of theatrical release (it didn't in any case here in Britain) but then shows up on cable or a streaming platform.
I would say this is definitely better than most of those but falls far short of the superlative quality that I see in Tangled or Mulan.
The thing itself looks excellent: the textures and character designs are totally a professional job and once you get past the generic premise, you start to really see the big company talent that was put into this. The lighting, the landscapes, just everything in the art direction is superb. The best thing in the movie might be ogling Red Shoes. She is that pulchritudinous; the kind that only an animated character can really be. She looks a bit like Marinette Dupain-Cheng; that sort of Dead-or-Alive style Eastern Mestiza.
If this movie does one thing intelligently, it is that it thinks through its own symbolism in a way that is consistent and logical. Saberspark said it better than me but the story of two characters working with curses which are inversions of each other clearly had a lot of thought put into it which I will admit elevates it above just another it's-what's-inside-that-counts narrative.
Our story of people's tendency toward physiognomy can be quite eye-rolling a lot of the time but it is the developing relationship between these two characters that makes it unique and engaging to a point where it would be unfair to peg this simply anti-lookist propaganda.
The title character by the way has nothing to do with the Red-shoes of Hans Anderson. It's just Snow-white by a different name. On that note, Red Shoes is not the protagonist here. The protagonist it Merlin. Yes, RS is sweet and all and balances a lot of inner strength with girly tenderness but that doesn't change that she is a bland character, filled to bursting point with what Lauren Faust calls "old-fashioned niceness" and I can see what she means.
It's OK, though, because like I said this is really the story of Merlin and the Red Shoes as he goes on his own character arc from shallow to great personal grown from his experiences with both his own curse, his relationship with the title character and his own personal demons. He is the only really well developed character on screen.
The focus is quite distinctively on the internal growth and the emotional side. There is a cool villain (I'll get to her) but get ready for long stretches without her or any material conflict.
The pacing can feel disjointed for this reason as well as a very rushed first act. I like how all these western fairy tale characters are being depicted as a Justice League style super hero team (awesome) but I would have liked a bit more time to be introduced to the team (not one by one but still). One narrated scene really rushes the set up. They could have done a lot with this: they could have used the reason for why they are cursed to make some interesting points about unconscious prejudices and how we might profile someone for the color of their skin (I think that kind of discourse is pretty au courant) but they didn't.
The Red Shoes story line is set up poorly too. They fairy-book their way through it and gloss over any kind of political intrigue so I really feel like I am dumped into the middle of the movie and not in the fun way.
An aspect of the movie that I would like to praise is the strong sense of internal mechanics regarding the magic. This includes the nuances of the curses in which the characters don't just change appearance but are also abled differently so Red Shoes loses a lot of her strength when she is, ahem, *not conventionally attractive* and meanwhile, the 7 change based on whether someone is looking at them which means they lose a height advantage and I think it diminishes their abilities to an extent so there is this fun element in which they need to get people to look away to do their best work though this is a little wasted.
The antagonist is the step mother who is also a witch. This movie really wants to fight against lookism but is quite happy to through mixed families and religious minorities under the bus. Either way she is charismatic and scary and I love that all her powers are wood based. I'm not quite sure what the symbolism is but it enriches the world we're in. Merlin's powers all involve using pieces of paper which (thankfully) is never explained.
You could do a lot worse than this though but here are a few more things that sort of annoyed me:
-They do not recognise Large red shoes at first even though she is wearing exactly the same clothes.
-Pin, oak and Kio. Yeah...
-The little people often do not change even when clearly no one can see them, for example, when they are at the back of their own party.
-The ending is really sudden.
Ultimately, this was a mostly sort of well made movie with its heart exactly in the right place but missed an opportunity to have a message that was far more pertinent and nuanced than it could have and should have been and through small errors just annoyed a lot of people despite its great visual beauty. So I guess this is the movie equivalent of Greta Thunberg. I mean it...
You could do so much worse.
OK, second of all: this movie is not weight negative or body negative. This movie has problems but being in the wrong philosophically is not one of them. This movie has a message that is good enough. Don't let the bad marketing bias you too much. Are you a larger person? I think you'll like what this movie has to say.
And finally we make it to the actual movie:
At first glance, this seems like just another Shrek; those movies that you never remember having any kind of theatrical release (it didn't in any case here in Britain) but then shows up on cable or a streaming platform.
I would say this is definitely better than most of those but falls far short of the superlative quality that I see in Tangled or Mulan.
The thing itself looks excellent: the textures and character designs are totally a professional job and once you get past the generic premise, you start to really see the big company talent that was put into this. The lighting, the landscapes, just everything in the art direction is superb. The best thing in the movie might be ogling Red Shoes. She is that pulchritudinous; the kind that only an animated character can really be. She looks a bit like Marinette Dupain-Cheng; that sort of Dead-or-Alive style Eastern Mestiza.
If this movie does one thing intelligently, it is that it thinks through its own symbolism in a way that is consistent and logical. Saberspark said it better than me but the story of two characters working with curses which are inversions of each other clearly had a lot of thought put into it which I will admit elevates it above just another it's-what's-inside-that-counts narrative.
Our story of people's tendency toward physiognomy can be quite eye-rolling a lot of the time but it is the developing relationship between these two characters that makes it unique and engaging to a point where it would be unfair to peg this simply anti-lookist propaganda.
The title character by the way has nothing to do with the Red-shoes of Hans Anderson. It's just Snow-white by a different name. On that note, Red Shoes is not the protagonist here. The protagonist it Merlin. Yes, RS is sweet and all and balances a lot of inner strength with girly tenderness but that doesn't change that she is a bland character, filled to bursting point with what Lauren Faust calls "old-fashioned niceness" and I can see what she means.
It's OK, though, because like I said this is really the story of Merlin and the Red Shoes as he goes on his own character arc from shallow to great personal grown from his experiences with both his own curse, his relationship with the title character and his own personal demons. He is the only really well developed character on screen.
The focus is quite distinctively on the internal growth and the emotional side. There is a cool villain (I'll get to her) but get ready for long stretches without her or any material conflict.
The pacing can feel disjointed for this reason as well as a very rushed first act. I like how all these western fairy tale characters are being depicted as a Justice League style super hero team (awesome) but I would have liked a bit more time to be introduced to the team (not one by one but still). One narrated scene really rushes the set up. They could have done a lot with this: they could have used the reason for why they are cursed to make some interesting points about unconscious prejudices and how we might profile someone for the color of their skin (I think that kind of discourse is pretty au courant) but they didn't.
The Red Shoes story line is set up poorly too. They fairy-book their way through it and gloss over any kind of political intrigue so I really feel like I am dumped into the middle of the movie and not in the fun way.
An aspect of the movie that I would like to praise is the strong sense of internal mechanics regarding the magic. This includes the nuances of the curses in which the characters don't just change appearance but are also abled differently so Red Shoes loses a lot of her strength when she is, ahem, *not conventionally attractive* and meanwhile, the 7 change based on whether someone is looking at them which means they lose a height advantage and I think it diminishes their abilities to an extent so there is this fun element in which they need to get people to look away to do their best work though this is a little wasted.
The antagonist is the step mother who is also a witch. This movie really wants to fight against lookism but is quite happy to through mixed families and religious minorities under the bus. Either way she is charismatic and scary and I love that all her powers are wood based. I'm not quite sure what the symbolism is but it enriches the world we're in. Merlin's powers all involve using pieces of paper which (thankfully) is never explained.
You could do a lot worse than this though but here are a few more things that sort of annoyed me:
-They do not recognise Large red shoes at first even though she is wearing exactly the same clothes.
-Pin, oak and Kio. Yeah...
-The little people often do not change even when clearly no one can see them, for example, when they are at the back of their own party.
-The ending is really sudden.
Ultimately, this was a mostly sort of well made movie with its heart exactly in the right place but missed an opportunity to have a message that was far more pertinent and nuanced than it could have and should have been and through small errors just annoyed a lot of people despite its great visual beauty. So I guess this is the movie equivalent of Greta Thunberg. I mean it...
You could do so much worse.