This is Disney's 50th animated film. And it shows. They have taken what they have learned from years of films and put together a great experience. But it's certainly not without it's flaws.
This film's animation has a fairly unique style. The characters and design don't look like most of the animation we've seen of late. It isn't Pixar quality, but for 3-D animation, it certainly looks spectacular. But the real gem of it is that the animation manages to emote. I was a little taken aback by how well thefilm manged to convince of emotions. They didn't have sudden changes, they had subtle(for a family movie) changes and it worked really well. The characters were fairly nuanced, especially in the writing department. There were characters who until the final 20 minutes felt more like shades of grey than a disney movie would normally give. The only real flaw I had with the animation was the hair. They do really interesting and inventive things with the hair but it is a huge continuity problem. it is never consistent how much hair she has. Sometimes its an infinite length sometimes its a shorter length and by shorter I mean like 50 feet instead of 50+ meters. Lastly most of the costume design works, nothing spectacular but not bad. The only problem I have is the step mother has a very stereotypical gypsy costume. She's not meant to be a gypsy, never has a gypsy voice, shes just an evil mother figure.
We also have the acting. For the most part all of the actors play their parts well and it is pretty clear that some of the facial animation comes from the actors performances. It is quite above par from standard animated films and one of the better works this year. The biggest problem is the star power of three of the actors. Ron Pearlman plays one of the villains and you can hear Ron Pearlman. The next issue is Zach Levi, sorry Zach but every time you speak all I hear is Chuck. Not Flynn. and then there is Mandy Moore who somtimes is pitch perfect and I don't even know shes Mandy. Sometimes though, she is very clearly Mandy Moore and it is a problem. There are some animal side kicks but they don't talk, just emote. It's quite amazing.
The directing works, but there are only a handful of shots where I went, "wow, I want to own that animation cell". The writing is great. Almost too great in my opinion. I was a little distracted by how good it was. Characters are well-developed they are shades of grey, they are conflicted and they grow. They are better than I had expected for a disney movie. Here's the really great part: A lot of humour(and it is a very funny movie) works for both kids and adults. I know a lot of kids movies have some humor for the adults and some for the kids inspiring the "why's that so funny Daddy" question. This really won't. It is good for both kids and adults. I consider it a worthy film of the disney legacy and it is one of my favorites.
I would say that of all the 3-D animated movies put together this is by and far the only one that I could use the Pixar Scale of grading on. So with that note, I am willing to give this movie a strong B+.
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