“The hero, Prince Siegfried, is out riding one day with his friends when he spies amidst swans on a lake a particularly eye-catching one with a crown on its head, the familiar Princess Odette. The princess is charmed by an evil wizard Rothbart who is crazy about marrying Odette. Handsome Prince Siegfried together with two merry squirrels struggle to defeat the evil wizard to complete this classic fairy tales. The movie features original Tschaikovsky music.”
-Lucky-19, IMDB
Some thoughts from me (Potential spoilers below…)
This is yet another film that falls under the “Actually pretty cute” category of movies that I add to this blog as a way of highlighting a movie that I think is deserving of more attention. This adaptation of Swan Lake was brought to us by Toei Animation, the same folks who created the extremely charming 1975 adaptation of The Little Mermaid that I talked about previously.
This take on Swan Lake is a fairly bog-standard adaptation of the Swan Lake story… though I’m perhaps biased in that my main reference point for Swan Lake are the Swan Princess movies, so maybe it’s just basis of comparison that’s making Swan Lake look standard by comparison.
One of the main standouts for this film for me is their take on the villainous Rothbart. Somehow, in spite of being unambiguously evil, Rothbart is a super charming villain. He is disarmingly goofy, but unlike some other movie his goofiness doesn’t feel like the film is dumbing the character down for the sake of kids who might be watching. He’s silly, but not pandering. I think it’s perhaps necessary in a film like this, where the villain is shown to have complete power over someone else… in this case, Princess Odette, whom Rothbart has kidnapped in an attempt to force her to marry him. It’s a situation that could be very uncomfortable to watch if they didn’t deliberately inject some levity into Odette’s plight, so it makes sense to defuse things a bit by showing Rothbart as a lovesick pushover for Odette. He wants her to marry him, but he wants it to be HER choice, so he tries to gently woo her… which is still not great, obviously, but it’s better than him menacingly forcing her to marry him against her will.
I also really love Rothbart’s relationship with his daughter, Odile. Odile gives Rothbart a fair amount of sass, as befits her role of “teenage daughter of the villain”, but Rothbart and Odile seem to actually love each other. It’s to the point that Rothbart is willing to avoid killing his romantic rival, Prince Siegfried, simply because Odile wants to marry him. And Rothbart is even pretty genial about the situation, referring to Siegfried as his “Future-son-in-law”. It’s almost weirdly heartwarming in a way, how much Rothbart prioritizes his daughter’s happiness.
One thing about this film that is both a positive and negative, is it’s slow pace. There’s not much to this film beyond the core story… no twists or turns, no surprise developments. Personally I found the film relaxing as a result, but I can see how that might turn others off. This isn’t really a good candidate for a Bad Princess Movie night, because there just isn’t a lot in this film to make fun of. But if you like the vibe of classic anime, and want to have a chill night watching a cute little film, this would be a good one to pick up.
Maybe just doublecheck what Dub of the film you’re watching… my DVD came with two different english dubs, and the first one was uh… dubious quality. Think early dubs, where everything seems to be recorded in one take, with voice actors who don’t seem to have much experience voice acting. But the second dub has much better voice acting, and does a good job of adding charm to an already charming film.
Bad Princess Movies 
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