Rated: G
Written and directed by: Ross Venokur
Produced by: John H. Williams
Music by: Tom Howe
Starring: Demi Lovato, Wilmer Valderrama, Sia, Ashley Tisdale, Avril Lavigne, G. E. M., Nia Vardalos, with Chris Harrison and John Cleese.
While writer and director Ross Venokur read fairy tales to his three daughters over the years, they came to realise Prince Charming gets around. Think about it: Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty… They’re all saved by the same guy. They all fall for, Prince Charming.
In Charming, Venokur has turned the fairy tale around so it’s the Prince who’s cursed: there is such as thing as being too charming. How is Prince Philippe Charming (Wilmer Valderrama) supposed to know whether it’s the curse or true love when all women are charmed by him?
Cursed by Nemeny Neverwish (Nia Vardalos), a scorned woman turned witch, Prince Charming must find true love before his twenty-first birthday to lift the curse of his charm. If he doesn’t then all love will disappear from the kingdom.
Like his father and his grandfather, Prince Charming must complete the gauntlet; a journey of self-discovery and manhood while besting the unbeatable beast, escaping giant women cannibals, and most importantly taking a leap of faith to find his true love.
It’s only with the help of a rouge thief, Lenny while disguised as a man of the world but really Lenore Quinone (Demi Lovato), a girl who grew up on the seas, who has locked her heart away for good. It’s only with her survival skills at the price of three fortunes in gold that the pampered, never-had-to-lift-his-charmed-finger-to-do-anything, has Charming any chance of completing the gauntlet. Let alone find true love.
It’s lucky Lenore is immune to his charms, otherwise the quest would never have had a chance. Nor the story.
Not that I was charmed by this film.
It was all a little pre-teen for me. Complete with girl-band music for the soundtrack that I found difficult to believe the characters were singing.
And the story was stretched beyond believability, even for a fairy tale animation with Lenore jailed for her thievery to suddenly be offered three fortunes to get Prince Charming through the gauntlet!?
And Lenore putting on a baker’s hat was enough of a disguise to be mistaken for the short and fat baker?
And fake moustache and hat makes you look like a boy?
Well, yeah, I guess. But not really.
I was however, charmed by details like the kingdom billboard advertising a lawnmower with a picture of a sheep and Charming offering Lenore’s partner-in-crime AKA a chirpy red bird a roasted pigeon leg.
And the animation was fluid with colours, my favourite scene when the two explorers enter an enchanted forest with vines reaching out with hands.
But the soundtrack and taking the leap-of-faith romance was directed at a younger audience who may be able to look past those stretches of narrative that made me roll my eyes because, as if!
