To commemorate its 100th anniversary last year, Disney decided to showcase just how far its animated output had fallen with the release of Wish, a desperate, and commercially disastrous, remix of its princess movies. Developed in the shadow of the subgenre-restarting phenomenon that was Frozen, it was a soulless regurgitation that showed how a certain magic had become so hard to conjure in a kingdom that used to be so full of it.
There’s the overwhelming feeling of deja vu with the release of Spellbound – another princess musical about magic led by the voice of an actor from Spielberg’s West Side Story with songs written by a once-esteemed award winner out on the exact same day – and while expectations are lower with a Netflix animation, the takeaway remains the same. They just don’t make ’em like they used to.
