Anatomy of a Disney Princess Movie

With the 4th of May coming up—in other words, Star Wars Day—I’ll digress into a mini-review of a George Lucas movie. Although not Star Wars, Strange Magic was really fun, in part because it was filled with sly little references to all kinds of Disney-princess-movie clichés. Finding all these little pokes at the stylized, at times inexplicable, elements in the Disney Princess cult was more fun even than the actual plot of the movie. (Although it was pretty good—still humming, “Love. Love is straaange.”)

So here’s a list of things that recur in every Disney princess movie I’ve seen—some in one movie, some in another--and also in Strange Magic, though perhaps not in quite the same way. 

• The Prince (Roland) has no friends. The Princess always has “little” friends who are animals—the Prince doesn’t actually have friends even if he spends time with animated thingamabobs. Roland doesn’t have friends either, but instead of glossing over that fact, he is given 3 extremely motivated, obviously laughing-at-him fake friends. Aladdin is no exception, a whackadoodle genie being the definition, in my mind, of a fake friend.
• There are characters that literally serve no purpose and take up time. Why do we have gossiping mushrooms with swanky vintage theme music? Why do we have an unbelievably irritating comedy duo with a silly twist at the end about how one of them is actually a girl? Why on earth does that little elf guy have a friend who follows him around for about half an hour of action and contributes no character development? These aimless plots make me feel like screaming.
• The King. The King. The King. If there’s a queen too, it’s parents. They are eternally stiff, off in some weird dimension about your personal life, and completely unreasonable. They always want you to marry “for the good of the kingdom,” but they also hate it if you show any actual interest in anyone. So what DO they want you to do? Someone ought to hit any animated parents on the head with a rolling pin.
• A weird woman who resembles no one living dominates the screen. This woman is often shown opposed to the Princess, but in reality (at least in Strange Magic) it’s the men who don’t like her. This woman is belligerent, overconfident, extremely unusual, and often screams a catchy piece of music about her very vague goals. Actually, in this movie we actually have two such women—such an embarrassment, but not of riches.
• There is a little village. This village might be trolls, it might be peasants, it might be forest animals—but there is always a little village that yells at you in chorus about your personal life. They know who you should marry, yes they do. They think you are really are so silly, really such a funny one, you don’t know you’re supposed to marry, but they’ve got it all figured OUUUUT. They are bossy too. Very bossy. And they blatantly barely even know you so why are they so sure?
  

​I could go on and on, but that’s some of the highlights. May the Fourth be with you.

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