There really should be a sub-genre for animators who left Disney during the eighties all ready to set up their own animation studio with blackjack and hookers…only for Disney to get their groove back with The Little Mermaid and eat them alive. We all know of Don Bluth, of course, the one who came closest to unseating the Mouse from its throne. And we’ve also met Phil Nibbelink. Well today we’re going to look at another of these would-be contenders; Richard Rich:

So how’s this for some animation bona fides: Richard Rich was the director of not one but two Disney animated features.

Those features were The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron.

Now now, let’s be fair. Disney in the mid-to-late eighties was in its most hellish creative funk since World War Two. The kind of hellish creative funk that would not be seen again until the early 2000s and…now. Of all the hellish creative funks Disney has been in I’d rank it…somewhere in the middle. Bad times, anyway. Disillusioned by working on Oliver & Company (as anyone would be) he left in 1986, convinced that the old studio was a goner and that nothing could ever change that.

After a stint in the desert making religious animation for the Church of Latter Day Saints, Rich watched the Disney Renaissance take off and decided to make his play for the crown with The Swan Princess, an animated re-telling of the ballet Swan Lake, without any actual ballet (thank Christ). Made on a paltry budget of 20 million dollars, it was worked on for four long years before being released in 1994, where it had to compete against The Lion King. The result was pretty much what would happen if you pitted a real swan against an actual lion, but it did have an extremely healthy second life on video. It’s not the worst of the Disney-chasers of this era, nor is it close to being the best. But it is significant for one very important reason. This was the last feature length, cinematically released animated motion picture that was created entirely by hand. Not a single cel of this was touched by the infernal machine. So let me be clear, no matter what I think of this movie…

So remember when I said that The Swan Princess did gangbusters on video? Well, that probably explains why this thing has eleven feckin’ sequels. Obviously, I’m not going to be covering them all here but I did come across one or two interesting factoids about them. One of them is that in all approximately eighteen hours of the Swan Princess Cinematic Universe they never get around to telling us the name of the kingdom where all this nonsense is supposed to be happening. There’s references to places like “Colchester” so presumably this is somewhere in Britain but I honestly have no idea.

Anyway, we begin with the birth of the Princess Odette in the Kingdom of Filenotfound where she is presented to her proud father, King William who proceeds to show her off to the cheering commoners.

Odette’s mother, is never seen or even heard of in this movie, although apparently the eleventh movie in the series, A Fairy Tale is Born, revealed that her name was Queen Aubri and that she died giving birth to Odette.

Which, as you can imagine, casts this scene in a rather grisly light.

Nobles come from all around to pay homage to the young princess, including the king’s good friend Queen Umberta and her young son Prince Derek. And we get a scene of Derek seeing the baby Odette that I’m going to be generous and call an homage to Sleeping Beauty.

William and Umberta decide that they want to unite their kingdoms and that the best way to do this would be to have Derek and Odette marry. I’ve seen reviews asking why William and Umberta don’t just marry each other and save all the hassle but I don’t actually think this is a plothole. If they marry, then both thrones will descend to their eldest child (Derek), cutting Odette completely out of the line of succession. Derek and Odette marrying means both family lines continue to rule. So thats perfectly sensible in a fucked up medieval kind of way. What’s less sensible is that they decide to have both children spend lots of time together so that they’ll fall in love and I think the Westermarck effect will have something to say about that.

While all that’s going on, however, we meet our villain, Rothbart, an evil sorceror voiced by Jack Palance. And that sounds like a great idea right? Unfortunately, Rothbart is probably the most mismanaged element of the whole film. Firstly, the name. That’s not the movie’s fault, of course, Rothbart is the villain of the original ballet but still. Rothbart. We’re already starting in debt. Second, let’s look at this design:

He doesn’t even look particularly evil. This is a design for a comically inept mad scientist. And the movie seems to have no idea what kind of villain he’s supposed to be. Brooding and menacing? Funny and manic? Tragic and misunderstood? The film tries a different mode with every scene he appears in and none of it works. None of it. I don’t know why no one caught basic stuff like “having the villain constantly refer to his arch-enemy the king as “Willie” just sucks any sense of threat out of the character”. It’s head-scratchingly incompetant.

Anyway, operation “Most Awkward Sleepover Ever” is put into effect and we get a montage of the two kids getting to hate each other to the tune of This Is My Idea, our first song which I actually like quite a bit. It’s a little bit “poor man’s Belle” but it skips along merrily and some of the lyrics are good for a chuckle, like when the commoners sing:

At least we’d get a holiday to rest our ploughs and axes
Someday these two will marry
Two lands will be united
And with some luck their marriage may result in lower taxes.

Odette and Derek continue to loathe each other until one day when they meet and suddenly realise that they’re both hot. I wish I was being facetious but it’s really that basic. An engagement is announced and the two dance before the court in a scene that I shall be generous and call an homage to Sleeping Beauty.

But Odette calls the marriage off when Derek says that he wants to marry her because she’s beautiful and can’t actually articulate a single other virtue that she possesses. And I would judge him more harshly if I could either.

So William and Odette return home and Derek gets pilloried by his sarcastic older courtier Rogers, who I will be pretty fucking generous and call an homage to Grimsby from The Little Mermaid.

I do like Rogers, he gives excellent sass.

Odette and her father are ambushed by Rothbart in the form of a gargoyle. One of William’s soldiers is able to reach Derek’s castle and warn the prince who races after them and finds William dying and Odette vanished. William’s last words to Derek are “We were attacked by a great animal. It’s not what it seems. Odette is gone” and peaces out to be with his beloved wife in the afterlife who will presumably have some pretty choice words for him.

Meanwhile, Odette’s been transformed into a swan and taken to a lake near Rothbart’s castle. He tells her that she can turn back into a human if she’s on the lake and the moon is shining on the lake but once the moon stops shining on the lake she’ll turn back into a swan. Rothbart tells Odette he wants her father’s kingdom and so she must marry him or be a swan forever. She, naturally, chooses swanhood.

Meanwhile, get this, Derek has gone fucking insane and convinced himself that not only is Odette still alive but that he’ll find her if he finds the “Great Animal” because beasts of the jungle take fucking hostages now, apparently. To prepare for his new life as Animal Punisher, he forces the court musicians to dress up as animals so that he can practice firing his (non-lethal) arrows at them. This is the kind of shit Nero used to do.

Meanwhile, it’s time to meet our Princess’ coterie of talking animal sidekicks; Jean-Bob the frog, voiced by John Cleese doing his French Knight voice and Speed the tortoise voiced by Stephen Wright doing his Stephen Wright voice. Jean-Bob wants Odette to kiss him so that he’ll turn into a Prince, but Odette refuses because in order to break the spell she must only kiss the man she loves.

Undeterred by her refusal (he is a French cartoon, after all) Jean-Bob tries to get some flowers for her by pole-vaulting over the crocodile infested moat around Rothbart’s castle. The thing about this movie is that there is precious little plot so a lot of the film is time killing nonsense like this. That said, there is some genuinely charming Looney Tunes-esque animation in this sequence and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t love it.

Anyway, after explaining to Jean-Bob that she totally would kiss him but…y’know…she launches into Far Longer Than Forever, the movie’s signature song. Like most of the songs in this it’s competent without being stunning. Interestingly, David Zipple (the lyricist) went on to write songs for Mulan and Hercules so clearly he had the stuff. There is honestly a lot of talent on display in this film it’s just not quite cohering.

Oh yeah, something that bugs me about this song. It kind of makes Odette seem like a massive hypocrite. The song is all about how Derek is her one true love and that he’ll rescue her, but she shit-canned him for not being able to think of any reason that he loved her apart from her beauty. So here’s my question: Why does she love him? Because Derek is the biggest himbo in all creation and if he has some hidden qualities that won Odette’s heart we never seen them. So we kinda have to assume that Odette’s love for Derek is every bit as superficial and based on appearance as his is for her.

The song is interrupted by the arrival of our last (and least!) comic relief character, a puffin named Puffin (brilliant) voiced with a clock-stopping Oirish accent by Steven Vinovich. And between this guy and the evil Irish nuns from last time I am in fierce danger of being radicalised.

Anyway, after she explains the curse to Puffin, he suggests that she flies away and finds Derek and lures him back to Rothbart’s castle so that he can see her transform and break the curse. She says she doesn’t know where he Derek is, because she doesn’t even know where she is, and after 12 movies that still won’t have changed.

Anyway, the animals launch a daring heist on Rothbart’s castle to get a map that will show them where they are and Odette and Puffin fly off to find Derek.

Derek meanwhile, has been doing meticulous research by reading every random book in the royal library and has decided that King William’s last words about the “Great Animal” not being what it seems means that the creature is a shapeshifter than can assume the form of literally any animal. Which is obviously a buck wild leap of deduction but would also mean that Derek’s hope of finding Odette is zero unless he’s willing to go through the kingdom literally killing every creature he finds.

Derek searches a nearby forest and sees Odette in swan form and growls “A swan! Of course!”

He instantly assumes that this random waterfowl is the monster who abducted his love and tries to shoot her. And Jesus Christ, Rich, if you’re trying to compete with Disney maybe don’t make a movie where the Princess almost gets shot by the Prince. You’d never see Disney doing that.

So, fleeing for her very life from her lover who’s trying to kill her…

…Odette flies back to Rothbart’s castle with Derek in hot pursuit. As the moon rises her friends try to persuade her to fly out on to the lake so she can transform and she’s all “yeah…I think he’s a psychopath now who just shoots swans for fun, maybe he’s not #goals”. She flies down anyway and he does very nearly shoot her but then she transforms in a lovely piece of animation.

She fills him in on what’s been happening and he tells her to come to the ball that his mother is hosting to find another princess for him to marry. He says he’ll profess his love for her in front of the whole court which will break the spell. He peaces out but Rothbart has overheard the whole thing and plots to disguise his hench-wench, Bridget, as Odette so that Derek will profess his love to her instead which will kill the real Odette. You know, we never get a scene where we see Rothbart actually laying the curse on Odette because with all these caveats and contingencies it would probably take half the runtime.

Bridget shows up at the ball disguised as Odette in a black dress, to the shock of the Queen who believed her to be dead. She and Derek start dancing.

Meanwhile, Odette has turned back into a swan and has been imprisoned in a dungeon by Rothbart but is broken loose by Jean-Bob, Speed and Puffin. Odette flies to the castle to stop the prince professing his love to someone who’s used magic to impersonate her in a scene I shall be generous and call a complete fucking rip off of The Little Mermaid.

Now, I’m sure you realise where this is going? Obviously, because Derek at first only loved Odette for her beauty, he has since learned to see past that to her true worth as a human being, and so he’s able to pierce Rothbart’s cunning ruse?

No. He does not do that. He thinks that Bridget is the real Odette and professes his love to her.

Rothbart shows up to gloat and tells Derek that Odette will soon die. The Prince races back to Rothbart’s castle where he finds Odette dying and having turned back to human form. For some reason. Derek tells her that the the vow was made for her so really, it should count, and dude, you fucked up. You had one job and you fucked up. At least own it.

Rothbart shows up to gloat and Derek demands that he save Odette’s life and Rothbart agrees if he defeats him in battle because it’s a knock off Disney movie from the nineties and we need our giant monster fight. And Rothbart turns into a massive green winged bat in a scene that I will be generous and call OH MY GOD RICHARD RICH YOU WHORE.

Anyway, Derek may be a shallow idiot himbo but he is good at killing animals and so defeats Rothbart quite handily. Odette is suddenly not dying, she decides that maybe it’s time to lower her standards and they get married. And I’m sure they’ll have many more adventures, each more beautiful than the last.

***

Scoring

Animation: 14/20

Whatever else you may say about his film output, never doubt that Richard Rich had the goods as an animator.

Leads: 05/20

There’s a reason that Sleeping Beauty isn’t actually about the Prince and the Princess.

Villain: 02/20

You’d think the guy who directed The Black Cauldron would know how to create a menacing villain.

Supporting Characters: 09/20

John Cleese could have been Zazu. He chose this instead because he thought Jean-Bob was a more interesting character.

Music: 11/20

Couple of halfway decent songs. For a low budget Disney wannabe from the nineties that’s a bloody miracle.

FINAL SCORE: 41%

NEXT UPDATE: Argh I’m working on a really, really exciting writing project that I can’t…tell…you about but I’ll be back 12 June 2025

NEXT TIME: Oh brave new world! That has such people in’t!