I'm a big fan of Hans Christian Andersen, the cobbler who contributed
some of the finest fairy tales to the body of children's literature. His
stories have been translated into film on numerous occasions. The film I
am about to review is, I fervently hope, the worst of them. We picked The Swans up for a buck at the store a few years back, and now we know why it was so cheap!
The first thing that struck me about this video was its poor quality.
The animation looked like something out of the thirties, even though it
was made in 1985. And no amount of tracking could reduce the wavering
that consistently plagued the movie. As for the sound...well, if the
animation seemed bad, it was nothing compared to the sound. The audio
track wiggled and wavered, moving in and out of states of extreme
distortion. Thus, I can attest that the initial words found on the
description on the back of the video -- wondrous songs and beautiful animation -- couldn't be further from the truth.
Now, perhaps the songs would be tolerable if the sound wasn't so
unreliable, but they would still be a far cry from great. The first song
is an inane tune the children sing about how happy their lives are as
they run around with animal masks on and await their father's arrival
from a long trip. Lisa, the only girl of the bunch, then sings a lullaby
to her 12 brothers. Then there's the recurring theme: They're the swans, they don't know where they belong, they fly in circles and they cry... And the love theme: Sometime, somehow, somewhere we'll be free. None come anywhere near the quality of a Disney or Don Bluth song.
The story begins when the king returns home to his children, having
taken an evil queen for his bride. The queen, jealous of the attention
showered upon the youths, casts a spell on the boys which makes them
swans by day. Lisa, who is clearly her father's favorite child, receives
a different spell which transforms her into a common girl who is
apparently as ugly as Lisa was beautiful; she looks about the same to
me, except her hair is scraggly and she has dirt on her face.
At any rate, the king no longer recognizes her, and she is banished from
the kingdom. After taking up lodgings with an old woman on the edge of
town, Lisa sees her befowled brothers flying overhead and recognizes
them instantly. Joyous, she flags them down for a reunion, but the swans
do not repay her the courtesy of recognition. (This is the best part of
the movie, the line my brother and I always wait for when some young
whippersnapper with no taste who we are watching for the afternoon
decides to waste seventy minutes on this movie. Usually this is all the
time we care to commit to The Swans.) When Lisa tells her brothers that she is their long-lost sister, one swan retorts, "You can't be our sister! Our sister was very beautiful, and you're really ugly!" Wow.
At this point, Lisa, apparently despondent over such callous treatment,
dives into a pool far below the ledge where she is standing. What the
slightly remorseful swans do not realize is that Lisa took the plunge
because this was a magical pool that would restore her previous
appearance. Of course, once Lisa regains her beauty her brothers are
thrilled and everything is all hunky-dory. At least for a while. But
there is still the troubling matter that Lisa's brothers are all birds.
And their transformation will not be achieved so easily as hers. Lisa
learns from a raven, or perhaps it's a crow, that in order to break her
stepmother's curse she must undergo an arduous ordeal on their behalf.
In addition to the difficult tasks she must perform, she has to promise
not to speak a word. Unlike Ariel, who had her speech stripped from her,
Lisa must discipline herself because she could speak at any time, but
it would cost her brothers their shot at a normal life.
Meanwhile, she meets a prince who falls head over heels in love with
her, and she is unable to verbally tell him that she loves him too. Not
only that, her mysterious activities have caught the attention of some
of the noblemen of the kingdom in which she has arrived, and she runs
the risk of being tried as a witch, without the possibility of defending
herself. In the end, of course, love must triumph, but the only emotion
I've ever felt at the end of this film was relief that it was over.
Obviously this was not meant to be an award-winning production. It was
never in the theaters (thank goodness) and I've never seen it in another
store since then. If you should come across it though, even if you find
it for a dollar like we did, spare yourself. Don't buy it. You may have
neighbors and nieces who will discover it and decide they want to watch
it, and once is more than enough times to view this low-budget massacre
of a Hans Christian Andersen masterpiece.
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