Owen Hurley directs possibly the lamest full-length animated feature I have ever seen. And I went to college where we had to watch stuff from all over the world. The 3D animation looks like a student rendered film and some of the modelling is pure evil. Naturally a film like this is aimed at a niche market, not at me, but even so I know good animation from bad. And this is bad. The rendering is sloppy and cheap looking. I’m talking less than music clip quality here, which is a real disappointment from such a well-respected toymaker, Mattel. Obviously, the execs down that way don’t have a clue about what film should look like - so often the problem when companies branch out into fields beyond their expertise. The worst part is that they’ve brought our beloved Barbie down with them.

Basically, it starts today as Barbie is talking to a frustrated artist/little girl. She tells a story of how Rapunzel (she with the long hair) is kept in a castle by her evil guardian, a generic evil-stepmother, accessories sold separately. She has a talking rabbit and a purple dragon (Dreamdate Dragon, I think) as companions and slaves all day for her evil guardian. Then she discovers a secret passageway that holds a magic paintbrush that opens a portal to a village (starting to sound a lot like a video game and the animation looks that way too.) She goes to the village, meets a prince, they fall in love, she goes back to the castle and the brush gets broken. How will she get back? Lucky her dragon’s father knows a few tricks and soon she’s back for a big ball and the nailbiting conclusion (fingernails not included). All wrapped up back in the present as a lesson on finding the magic of art inside yourself. Phew!

I don’t remember Rapunzel this way, but I guess it’s been ‘modernised.’ Or something.

Little girls (and a percentage of modern little boys) will love this film without doubt. I found it painful to watch with all these newfangled colours they have today. So many garish pinks. You know how you walk down the ‘girls’ aisle in the toystore and it’s all pink? Multiply that by pi then times it to the tenth power and you got the kind of garish levels I’m talking about. And that’s just the pinks.

I won’t go on and on about the rendering and substandard animation, but I will say this: the anamorphic widescreen made all those ‘imperfectly thin’ characters so much thinner, I’m sure signposts could hide behind them. Gaunt is a word I want to say here. Also, the film is a sad reflection of the cheapness of modern animation and the flooded market of people who know how to use programs, but don’t know how to animate. There are several instances incorporating motion capture which stand out because the rest of the animation is so dodgy, and I’m sure that was not their original intention.

As for audio, this film sounds like it was recorded down a well. Down a well. Down a well. Some of the dialogue is confused and the lip synch isn’t great in parts. But, one excellent point: The London Symphony Orchestra provided the classical background music and it is beautifully presented. Mostly composed for the film by Arnie Roth, there is one adapted work of Dvorak’s which lends a nice feel to the ball scenes.

As for extra features, there is but one: A 26 minute documentary about great female painters in history and a sales pitch for a 19 year old artist, Amanda Dunbar in Dallas, Texas. At 19 she makes her living from painting, which is great and more power to her, but I couldn’t help noticing her ‘studio’ looked like a lawyer’s office, complete with teak furniture, a loft and every possible barely-used artistic supply she could ever need (and not a single drop of spilled paint on the floor). I’ll leave you to put two and two together. To its credit though, the piece does feature a little bit of cool animation created from Renaissance paintings, but the animation of other styles and periods is more lacking.

All up, this DVD will appeal to the intended market: Little girls. I foresee plenty of them in birthday gifts and Christmas presents for a coupla years yet. I like the message of empowering girls in the modern world; I really think that’s important. I also think they won’t care what I say about the DVD, they’ll love it regardless, because it’s Barbie brought to LIFE! I just wish Mattel could have respected this beloved icon enough to spend a bit more money on her movie.