“Every day princess Ellen awakes to her 20th birthday celebrations knowing that she must kill the evil witch who cursed her or find a true love. If she doesn’t make it, the kingdom will be destroyed by dark storm, as it already had happened multiple times. Luckily, the princess is protected by a magical mark which she was given by court alchemist. Will she be able to persuade her friends, break the strong warding spells and defeat the powerful witch?
-Viktor Kristoff, Producer, IMDB
Some thoughts from me (Potential spoilers below…)
This is yet another “Not actually a BAD Princess movie” that I’m adding to this blog, in an effort to draw more attention to a film that I actually quite enjoyed! This is a film that I stumbled onto through an eBay search for new Princess movies, so I went in pretty blind to what this film was about. The description on the eBay listing alone was enough to interest me… A Princess is trapped in a groundhog’s day loop, trying over and over to save her kingdom? That’s a pretty cool sounding premise, so heck why not order it and give it a watch.
And I’m glad I did, because as mentioned I found this to be a really decent film. The film is very well plotted, a necessity for a story like this where a character is reliving the same day over and over. Princess Ellena (Or “Ellen”, as my subtitled copy called her) wakes up on her 20th birthday, grumpy at the fuss everyone is making over a curse that she is trying to convince herself isn’t true. Said curse, which was placed on Ellena as a baby by an evil witch, will allegedly destroy the entire kingdom at sunset on her 20th birthday. Ellena goes about her day, shopping in the market, shooting arrows with her friend, and avoiding Prince John, Ellena’s childhood friend who came to offer his help at the request of Ellena’s father and the Court Alchemist. An ancient tome was discovered that says the curse could be broken by true love, so the very well-meaning Prince John (Who has been in love with Ellena since they were kids), tries his best to charm the Princess. Ellena is not wooed however, and as the sun sets on her 20th birthday she and everyone else is horrified to confirm that the curse is indeed true, and the kingdom is swallowed up by a black storm… But then somehow, Ellena wakes up back in bed, at the dawn of her 20th birthday.
Unbeknownst to her, after Ellena was cursed by the witch the Court Alchemist placed a protection spell on her, shown to the audience as a glowing rune on her hand. The rune is the rune of time, and thanks to it’s magic Ellena will relive her 20th birthday until she is able to either stop the storm, or kill the witch.
What follows is Ellena trying a few different ways to save her kingdom. And again, this is all very well plotted in my opinion. The first bit of the film is Ellena learning through trial and error how the loop works, and the best ways to convince others that she is indeed in a loop (As no one other then her remembers the events of the previous “day”). The film wisely knows that once it’s established the time loop that viewers will get the gist, we don’t have to be explicitly shown everything that Ellen is doing each day, which stops what could’ve been a very repetitive film from being very boring to watch. For example, Ellena needs to convince someone of the loop, so she tells them exactly how many coins they and everyone else in the room has in their pockets at that specific moment in time. You don’t see the day when she finds this information out, because the film knows that the audience can safely assume that it was knowledge gathered on a previously unseen day.
I also really like how Ellena’s romance with Prince John is handled. As mentioned Prince John starts off the film already being in love with Ellena, but much like Ellena convincing herself the curse isn’t real, she convinced herself long ago that John isn’t interested. We don’t find that out until the end of the film though, when Ellena and John have a heart to heart about their feelings and how the circumstances that led them to grow apart as kids. So at first all we know is that Ellena seems to dislike John a fair bit, at the very least she does not take kindly to the King’s attempt to pair them together to break the curse. Once the loop begins Ellena tries to allow herself to be courted by John… but it feels very forced, and unsurprisingly does not result in the curse breaking. It’s only when Ellena decides to stop trying to force romance to happen and focus on trying to kill the witch does she slowly begin to return John’s affections.
At one point Ellena has to answer John’s question of “Do you love me?” truthfully, as part of a magical test to get an important tool in their quest to kill the witch. The first time they encounter this test Ellena has to answer “I don’t know” before the magical rock wall approves. But after a few more loops, including one where Prince John proudly declares his love for Ellena in front of her, the “I don’t know” answer stops working and Ellena realises the truthful answer is now “…Yes”. I really enjoy that Ellena herself gets caught by surprise by it, and it very smoothly solves the answer of pairing Ellena and John up without it feeling rushed.
I’ll avoid revealing how the day ends up being saved, if you want to know that part you’ll just have to check this movie out. I just learned that this film has a sequel, so I’m gonna have to track that down and give it a watch too. Here’s hoping it’s just as good as the first!
Bad Princess Movies 
Leave a comment