*SPOILERS*
The Good:
The Bad:
The Ugly:
The Good:
- Most of the wonderful, original cast is back, including a few new faces such as the future Capt. Kirk Chris Pine and Callum Blue, who ironically filmed this during his "Dead Like Me" years. And not forgetting to mention John Rhys-Davies, who makes even a bad movie worth watching. Also, we get to see how the romance between Clarice and Joe end up. It's always wonderful seeing an older couple romance portrayed so sweetly in movies today.
- Julie Andrews sings for the first time since her botched throat surgery. Even when her voice is at less-than-capacity, she can still out-sing just about anyone out there.
- The costumes are absolutely gorgeous!
The Bad:
- Lily is reduced to a peripheral character here, with not much to do but support Mia in everything she does. And therein lies the problem. In the first movie, she acted as Mia's grounding force by criticizing her when necessary (like when she let her friends down). In this film, however, Lily just seems to play along. You'd think the uber-feminist Lily would have something to say about Mia's being forced to marry to become queen, but she doesn't. And at first she hates Nicholas for wanting to usurp the throne, but is fully supportive of Mia pursuing him later when her feelings for him change. The Lily from the first movie would be knocking some sense into her, not covering for her.
- Raven. She is completely out of place in this movie. However, as one of Disney's rising stars at the time, she was put in mainly to sell more tickets and soundtracks. I probably wouldn't have minded her had she not ruined Julie Andrews' song. Apparently kids today don't want to hear an "old lady" sing unless a teen is singing along with her in a hip-hop beat.
- What set this movie off on the wrong course in the first place is that it seems to be geared solely toward girls under the age of 7. The first movie had something for both kids and adults to love, but not so here. Mia's narration sounds like she's reading to preschoolers, characters say things out loud that are already implied, and certain throw-away scenes that had little to do with the plot were stuck in just to appeal to young girls. I think this approach ended up alienating a lot of fans of the first film.
The Ugly:
- The editing. A lot of deleted scenes should have been left in, and some of the scenes that made it should have been left out (see below for an example). Also, the movie tended to go from one scene to another without much coherence. For instance, in one scene Mia stomps on Nicholas' foot in anger and runs to the kitchen to cry over ice cream. Clarice sort of, kind of admonishes her before taking her to see her new bedroom. Wait, what? What happened to Nicholas and his uncle? Who cares! Little girls want to see Mia's room and clothes, dang it!!
- The slumber party scene. Thank God for DVD's so you can skip right over it! It does absolutely nothing for the plot, and the premise of a 21-year-old having a slumber party with little girls as a "bachelorette" party is preposterous. She and Lily from the first movie should have gotten plastered and gone streaking around the castle or something. Oh wait, this is supposed to be a family movie. ;)