“Cinderella and other fairy tales get jumbled together when a grandmother tells a story.”
– Anonymous, IMDB.
The Magic Riddle is a 1991 Australian animated feature film directed and written by Yoram Gross. Yoram Jerzy Gross was an Australian producer of children’s and family entertainment. Internationally acclaimed for his films and television series. Gross used his films to convey loyalty, peaceful resolve, and good winning over evil. “If you watch my films carefully you will see the history of my life”, he said. The Magic Riddle grossed $1,510,536 at the box office in Australia.
Some thoughts from me (Potential spoilers below)…
The Magic Riddle is a very strange film, so strange that it’s at times somewhat unpleasant. I like the concept of the film, a mish-mash of different fairy tales that come together to form a cohesive story… the thing is that The Magic Riddle doesn’t ever come together. At it’s heart, The Magic Riddle is attempting to create a metaphorical mosaic, where all the dissimilar pieces form a single image. Instead, what ends up happening is that each individual piece fights for dominance, so it becomes a challenge to keep track of the big picture.
One thing that catches my attention in The Magic Riddle are the occasional instances of decent artwork within the film. In particular, there’s a scene where Cindy is painting a wall where she’s drawn in a very appealing manner. She’s both aesthetically pleasing, as well as relatively dimensional (meaning that she doesn’t just feel like a flat drawing on paper).
(Thinking about it, the rare use of lighting in this scene also greatly helps make this scene stand out, as well as make Cindy feel dimensional)
Now, compare the above shot to the below image. Can you believe that these characters are from the same movie?
The majority of movies that I have on this blog all come pretty highly recommended for a Bad Princess Movie Night. While I don’t want to say ‘skip this one’, I will say that The Magic Riddle could probably be passed without you feeling like you missed something wonderful. It all boils down to whether or not you find the weirdness funny, or if it hits weird and stays weird. So my recommendation is that you preview this one, and judge for yourselves.
Bad Princess Movies 
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