This week, Disney has made my jaw drop twice. Once while watching Chicken Little in amazing Disney Digital 3D, and just a little bit agao while watching the new DVD release, Disney Princess: A Christmas of Enchantment.
At the moment, I'm just a little wordless. I'm still trying to figure out just what this DVD has to do with Disney Princesses or Christmas. Sure, the princesses are all "here" and when I say "here" I mean that they are animated in what appears to be Macromedia Flash with all the care and detail of a Kindergarten finger painting.
I'm not against the idea of a Disney Princess Christmas DVD. In fact, the idea lends itself to all sorts of interesting applications. This DVD could have been very good, or at least passable.
Graned, I'm not the target audience for this release, being a 77 year old male, but I don't know a little girl who would fall for this. This is shamelessness the likes of which we haven't seen from the Walt Disney Company. Direct-to-video sequels are masterpieces compared to this fluffy and downright bizarre compilation.
The "content" ranges drastically from mildly interesting to devastatingly cheap. The DVD opens with a Flash intro in which a magical theatre grows frmo the snow. We go inside and the six main Princesses (Snow, Cindy, Aurora, Belle, Jasmine and Ariel) are seated with their respective men in the boxes. On stage we are treated first to a new rendition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as performed by the girls. Never mind that they're in the boxes watching. The new animation here consists of simply rendered presents in CGI mixed with recycled footage from their various films and sequels.
Then we get our first glimpse of new character "animation" as Cinderella addresses the camera from her box to introduce the next segment, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" from
Fantasia 2000.
Cinderella's face and body are static as her mouth tries to keep up with the new dialogue. It's creepy. The other intros, performed by the rest of the gang are similarly scary. Snow White's is even more so because her eyebrows move as well as her lips. Who knew they'd all moved to Stepford?
Sadly, "Tin Soldier" is the best thing on this DVD and it's been castrated. Originally choreographed to Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2, a new generic and uninspired sondtrack has taken the classic music's place. Will the kids know? Of course not. But the short was animated to a specific piece of music. Without that backbone, it simply doesn't work as well. Why waste money on a new soundtrack? And yes, toys are given out at Christmas, but this particular short has little to do with the holidays. The money would have been better spent on some real animation for Disney's cherished leading ladies.
The next segment is "Aurora's Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy", a short piece of nothing in which footage of
Sleeping Beauty is set to Tchaikovsky's piece from
The Nutcracker. Unremarkable, and frankly, I was bored to tears, which means the 5 year olds really won't dig it. I've often been told I have a 5 year old's attention span, so I'm qualified to make these kinds of judgments.
Then "Belle's Enchanted Christmas" condenses
Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas into 15 minutes. I ask: why? This is filler.
Then a Silly Symphony,
The Cookie Carnival, is shown. While it's a nice enough Silly Symphony (not one of my favorites, but whatever), it has nothing to do with Christmas. Maybe it's like a Main Street Electrical Parade in Disney's California Adventure kinda thing.
Next up is a read-along segment about Ariel discovering "Chrissymas." A cute idea, and probably handy for those with little children who are learning how to read. It's immediately followed by an uninspired reading of "The Night Before Christmas" as footage from the original Disney short and sundry other films (like
The Aristocats) are montaged together.
"Once Upon A Wintertime", the classic Mary Blair-designed segment from 1948's
Melody Time is then shown in pristine entirety. While lovely, again, it has nothing to do with princesses or Christmas.
The finale is a poppy new song entitled "The Beauty of the Season", performed by the Stepford Princess Club with the same bizarre, stiff and downright creepy new animation.
Bonus features include "O Christmas Tree", in which the viewer decorates a tree themed to an individual princess, and when you finish, that particular gal performs her own rendition of the classic carol; and the Virtual Snowglobe Maker, a slightly diverting activity with a self-explanatory title. Previews can be found for
Pooh's Grand Adventure, Disney Learning Adventures DVDs, Disney's Little Einstein DVDs, more Disney Princess DVDs,
Lady and the Tramp: Platinum Edition and
JoJo's Circus.
While it was a good idea, it's a real shame so little was put into the making of this disc. Why not an animated feature from DisneyToon Studios where the Princesses throw a holiday ball together intertwined with classic shorts, or something? There is real potential here, but this release sadly falls short. Maybe in the future a more satisfying and entertaining volume will be produced.
All images are copyright Disney, all rights reserved.
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