The Swan Princess: Princess Tomorrow, Pirate Today! (Video 2016)

The Swan Princess: Princess Tomorrow, Pirate Today!: Directed by Brian Nissen, Richard Rich. With Laura Bailey, Yuri Lowenthal, Joseph Medrano, Jennifer Miller. With her parents away for the summer, fun-loving, young Princess Alise must spend her time with Queen Uberta, training to be the perfect, proper royal…But what she really wants is to become a swashbuckling pirate! Princess Alise sets sail with Lord Rogers, Jean-Bob the frog and Speed the turtle on a bold, high seas journey filled with amazing adventure, danger and discovery. After a shipwreck leaves the brave crew stranded on a wild, mysterious island, they meet Lucas, a young boy who has been living in seclusion. Now the faithful friends must work together to escape the island and the ferociously hungry creatures that dwell there.

“Of the u0026#39;Swan Princessu0026#39; films, the best one is by far the first one which is still a flawed but enjoyable film now. The following sequels u0026#39;Secret of the Castleu0026#39; and u0026#39;Mystery of the Enchanted Kingdomu0026#39; were not great and had a fair bit wrong with them but had components too that made them watchable.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eu0026#39;The Swan Princess Christmasu0026#39; was hugely disappointing and a terrible film in general, it looked bad when advertised and the film was even worse. u0026#39;A Royal Family Taleu0026#39; is a marginal improvement over that film but was a big royal mess still. The good news is that u0026#39;The Swan Princess: Princess Tomorrow, Pirate Today!u0026#39; is slightly better than those two films. The bad news is that itu0026#39;s still not a good film at all. The characters are not quite as bland and annoying here and the story is easier to follow than u0026#39;A Royal Family Taleu0026#39;. Not that either is saying much though.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBest thing about it is the character of Alise. Found her too sickly sweet in u0026#39;A Royal Family Taleu0026#39;, here she had a much stronger personality and was much more likable, having a real charm and adopting Odetteu0026#39;s caring side. Her chemistry with Lucas was pretty nice.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHowever, u0026#39;Princess Tomorrow, Pirate Today!u0026#39; didnu0026#39;t feel like a u0026#39;Swan Princessu0026#39; film. Odette is very underused and one doesnu0026#39;t see her caring or feisty side. One also misses her chemistry with Alise, which was the only thing that worked about u0026#39;A Royal Family Taleu0026#39;. Derek also has very little to do, in fact apart from at the start and end pretty much he and Odette are sidelined, and he is seemingly getting wetter and wetter as a drip with each instalment of the now over-milked u0026#39;Swan Princessu0026#39; franchise. The funny characters that were bright spots in the first two sequels, so Uberta, Rogers and Jean-Bob are annoying and the rest are bland, most of the main u0026#39;Swan Princessu0026#39; characters have little to do.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eInstead, u0026#39;Princess Tomorrow, Pirate Today!u0026#39; feels too much like the Alise show and story-wise itu0026#39;s like an extended and very padded out episode for a TV series. Itu0026#39;s at least easy to follow but is just very dull. Admired that it tried to teach positive messaging to younger audiences, but these are messages taught many times and to much better effect, having been done with more subtlety than the sugary and slightly preachy way itu0026#39;s done here. Lucas has nice chemistry with Alise but was in need of a more interesting personality somewhat.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eu0026#39;Princess Tomorrow, Pirate Todayu0026#39;su0026#39; animation is not as horrendous as it was in particularly u0026#39;Swan Princess Christmasu0026#39; but is still very bad, with the blocky character movements, complete lack of fluidity, at times creepy facial expressions, backgrounds that make plastic feel like they have more life and the incredibly flat colours it constantly looked like an outdated video game with no fluidity, vibrancy or detail.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOnce again, the music makes no effort to be true to the style of the original film, something that the first two sequels did try to do, the incidental music doesnu0026#39;t always flow or fit, is sometimes paced ploddingly and has a real habit of drowning out the dialogue. Also could have done without the songs, not only were they forgettable and irritating but they were ill-placed. The script flows badly, is cloying rather than heartfelt and even worse has humour that is just witless and some of it will go over childrenu0026#39;s heads and even have adults questioning their appropriateness. The voice acting is also poor, apart from that for Alise the other voice actors overdo it or sound bored.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAll in all, while perhaps the least bad of the CGI-animated u0026#39;Swan Princessu0026#39; films (can we agree that u0026#39;The Swan Princessu0026#39; doesnu0026#39;t work in CGI?) u0026#39;Princess Tomorrow, Pirate Today!u0026#39; is still a very poorly executed film that doesnu0026#39;t feel like u0026#39;The Swan Princessu0026#39; at all.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnd before anybody spouts the tired cliché of u0026quot;itu0026#39;s a kidu0026#39;s film, adults have no right to be judging itu0026quot; (or any other ridiculous variation), this is coming from a lifelong fan of animation who always judges a film fairly, subjectively and perceptively and with awareness of what the target audience is and what it set out to do. Oh, and animated films are meant to be family films, not kids films, another reason why the cliché needs to be nipped in the bud. 2/10 Bethany Cox”