Loosely based on the 19th century epic poem Ruslan and Ludmila by Alexander Pushkin, this movie was produced in Ukraine since 2013 and was planned to be hand drawn animated. Made by Animagrad and featuring local Ukranian talent in the cast, the English version was released in March 2018 while it was presented and distributed around Europe and Asia during various animation festivals. And given that it was made in Ukraine, it proved quite a success in its home country, opening second at the box office behind the recent Lara Croft: Tomb Raider reboot. So with all of that said, can this new animated fairytale flick steal our hearts, or should it be fed to the dragons and burn to a crisp? Let's take a look!
Story: Taking the basic elements of the poem, the writers instead decided to take what could have been an epic fairytale and turn it into a Disney rip-off, most taking elements from Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and Tangled right down to plagiarised dialogue. While I understand that adapting a six verse long poem would be difficult to translate to the screen, this movie decides to throw all structure out of the window and never takes time to establish the characters, world and a sense of pacing. Scenes start and end just as quickly without forwarding the story and instead feels mechanical with random fight scenes, cliches and abrupt openings and endings. While there are interesting concepts with the princess legend, world and adventure aspects, they are quickly squandered because Ruslan and Mila's romance isn't worth caring about. I'm not joking when I say their obligatory romance montage at the 20 minute mark (yes, really) takes place straight after their fight scene meet cute and before she's kidnapped by Chornomor. It says a lot when Ruslan falls for an obvious glamour spell which causes the obligatory hopeless moment before the climax. Oh, and them ending up engaged which will likely end in an insanely expensive divorce because they knew each other for around 8 hours and they're still stuck at Choromor's castle. The only things which made me grateful throughout this mess was that there was no liar revealed and the ninety minute running time felt mercifully short. So it's safe to say the plot, structure, are stolen of any common sense or intrigue despite its admittedly interesting source material.
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| I'm surprised Dreamworks, Disney and DC haven't filed lawsuits for this magazine cover alone. |
Animation: With a budget of $5 million, it's safe to say the animation won't be as high quality as Disney, Dreamworks or Illumination. It's clear the animators are working with what, so I guess I can be a bit more forgiving for the effects, textures and character animation looking more like a PlayStation 3 cut-scene. The character designs are a mix of the generic Disney look with the big eyes and exaggerated body types, but their dead eyes and under-defined texturing end up making them look creepy. The character animation also applies to this, especially during the numerous fight scenes where the psychics are inconsistent and slowly edited and choreographed. While some of the backgrounds admittedly look interesting mostly due to the Russian influenced architecture and vast scale, it can feel a bit dull after a while because the characters barely spend time in the locations which mostly comprise of libraries, cliffs and swamps. Also, while it may look nice on the surface, some of the design and editing choices can leads to some strange questions i.e. why does Ruslan's chest plate have six-pack markings? Why was Ruslan's sword fight test all in a motion sickness inducing point of view shot with slow and jerky movement? Why did it show Cat's fight with Farlaf, Rogday and Ratmir via shadows when we already know he can turn into a lion monster? It's questions like this which end up making the animation feel like a wasted opportunity.
Characters: I guess the writers never learned the show don't tell rule in characterization because everyone either spouts out their traits or act as caricatured as possible with no development. Mila is your typical badass & rebellious princess who wants adventure (but no end goal) and not to get married when she's really an aggressive and arrogant damsel in distress who wants to marry the first man she meets and can't even defeat an army of alive food (yes, really). Ruslan (who distractingly sounds like but isn't voiced by Justin Long) is a down-on-his-end actor who pretends he's a knight, goes on a (mostly glossed over) quest to save Mila & falls for the oldest tricks in the book. Nestor is Ruslan's friend and acting partner who just for banter, is responsible and be an annoying despite one snarky line during the dull climax which admittedly made me chuckle. Cat is responsible for the only funny lines and the exposition before Ruslan moves onto the next conflict and is quickly forgotten. The villain Chornomor would have been threatening if he wasn't screeching every five minutes, had no motivation to turn princesses into stone & destroy love and had a weakness that wasn't his Kenneth-Branagh-Poirot mustache getting cut off (again, yes really!). Finn is a wizard who lost his love Naina to Chornomor in the opening and becomes a crazy hermit with his character model being taken right out of Lord of the Rings . Farlaf, Rogday and Ratmir are three brothers for who end up in wacky situations while following Ruslan to save Mila and turn up at the most random times that I almost forgot they were in the film. Another part of the problem with these characters is the terrible voice acting. Despite first being recorded and animated in English, they all sound like they were dubbed in ADR and just received their lines with no context to their scenes, so decided to go over the top. With their lack of traits or development which are as thin as tissue paper, it's safe to say nobody is worth getting to know, let alone caring about in this,
This movie just confused me. A predictable story that squanders its source material to cash in on Hollywood trends, a romance with nothing unique, animation that may look nice at first but then shows it's creepy true colours and characters whose sole traits are either to act as over the top as possible or be as hopelessly cliched as possible. It may not be as anger inducing as other low budget animated knock-offs I've seen, but that's not saying it didn't annoy me with every cliche in the book. I can only say to skip this movie and watch the Disney movies that clearly influenced it. They may follow a certain formula, but have plots which are different when looked at closer and have romances worth investing in because of the chemistry and development.
Story: 2/10
Animation: 5/10
Characters: 2/10
Overall: 3/10
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