Dawno, dawno temu

Dawno, dawno temu (2011) 

A Disney, American Arabela, driven primarily by Carlyle’s Rumbur... Um, Rumplestiltskin and the Evil Mayor on the evil side and... and... And nobody at all on the good side. It has a lot of nits (production design that looks perhaps even worse that our domestic Czech pasteboard studio plays and cheap effects for effect’s sake) and slips (uneven episode quality, where the first really good one is episode seven, and the aforementioned lack of interesting main characters), but it all stands or falls (and it seems to be falling so far) on utter waste and lack of exploitation of the sturdy theme (it’s been proven to work in Bill Williams’ Fables, similar in many ways) and fairytale atmosphere, which is in short supply in this movie; which is criminal in view of the theme. Here and there it shines through, but mostly disappears soon after. Character names and magic alone is simply not enough. On the other hand, when it isn’t one of the dull, filler episodes to make up the numbers (and there are a lot of those), then as a family relax series it works; this applies to the first season, but season two completely gives up on any fairytales and becomes an attempt at a regular fantasy following the template of successful sagas of the past few years. And it doesn’t work at all and merely gets you asking questions like “What were the creators smoking when they wrote this?". Arabela is still much more original, playful and more fairytale-like, and simply better on all fronts. And isn’t nearly so slow-moving. (22.10.2012)