By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle
Not to proverbial on smaller animators but at a time when there’s so many brilliant feature animations, a la Frozen, The Lego Movie, nearly everything Studio Ghibli’s made, the flaws of this one appear extra ugly. Fairytale: Story of The Seven Dwarfs is probably fine for very small children but that’s all. I love a new spin on an old fairy tale, which is what directors Boris Aljinovic and Harald Siepermann attempt but mostly fail to do here, by mixing up the Sleeping Beauty and Snow White tales, amongst others. There’s innuendo too, (this mainly focused on penises, the Princess has a curse on her that means she can’t “be pricked before her eighteenth birthday” and there’s a nod to size at one point), with a clear attempt to elicit smirks from adults watching but mostly this falls flat. Along this line Snow White is characterised as a narcissist and a slutty one at that, and maybe it was just me, but Dellamorta the evil witch of the feature, seemed to be inspired by a diva-ish Shirley Bassey! This description makes Fairytale sound fun but all this allusion is simply not carried off very well.
Mostly, though, this is a kid’s film that some little ones may enjoy but not if, as noted above, they’ve been exposed to the much better ones. The songs are weak, more irritating than sweet or emotive, as are the voices, no Indina Menzel here or anything remotely close. There are some half-baked moral lessons about friendship and tying shoelaces from the dwarf protagonists that some parents might be pleased to pass along but the delivery of these lessons lacks creative finesse. Better to spend ninety minutes reading some version of these original Grimm tales than watching this.
On general release from Friday 13th February.