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Movie:		7.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		7.0
Extras:		3.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	David Block
Starring:	Corey Burton • Erin Torpey • Frank Welker • Gilbert Gottfried • Linda Larkin • Roger Craig Smith • Russi Taylor • Susanna Blakeslee • Tress MacNeille
Genre:	Animation
Release Date:	September 08, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $20.99
Amazon:

With a price tag of $20.99 and a runtime just shy of an hour, parents may perhaps balk at this most recent Disney parental go-between, which will happily entertain their kids so that they don’t have to, deciding that the rate is less in line with your average babysitter than a live-in, inner-city nanny who also performs light housework.

A pure piece of candy-coated bubblegum fantasy aimed firmly at the under tens the Disney Princess Enchanted Tales series blends traditional animated fantasy with songs and simplified life lessons into bite sized developmental education with the added benefit of perhaps a little peace and quiet.

Dividing itself into two separate chapters loosely knotted together by the soothing, non-threatening, warble of narrator Susanna Blakeslee (she even sounds like a Disney character), this edition reintroduces us to the continuing adventures of Princess Aurora, aka Sleeping Beauty, and Princess Jasmine, star of Aladdin.

Beginning with Sleeping Beauty the first chapter finds Aurora charged with minding the kingdom while the King and Queen journey with Prince Philip to the royal conference (the what?). Filled with a great desire to aide her loyal subjects Aurora vows to do a stellar job, belting out a rendition of…well, we’re not sure, but it sounded pleasant enough. Bizarrely though much of her responsibility appears to consist of ordering her trailing entourage of palace staff to perform tasks (paint this, plant that) – hardly in keeping with the spirit really.

Then having realized that there just aren’t enough hours in the day she elects to use the wand Fairy Godmother Merriweather lent her for emergencies (of course Merriweather is the one behind this blunder – she is, of course, the fat one). But after a madcap set piece with a farmer, some green pigs, and a throne room of giant chickens, she realizes that the right way to do things is the old fashioned way, with patience and effort. Which is all the easier a decision to arrive at when you have a palace full of servants to help. Banquet anyone?

Next we journey to Arabia, where Princess Jasmine (who has a figure that makes an anorexic look healthy) is tired of lounging around the house, eating and posing for portraits (sounds awful). Wanting a challenge she decides to aide in the teaching of the local kindergarten, which quickly descends into a nightmare with the little darlings wailing, and making much in the way of mischief. Dispirited, she ponders giving up. But then after a brief song it emerges that her father’s prize stallion has gone missing and that she must go in search of it. She searches; she finds it – because she never gave up.

It’s all perfectly functional, completely innocent puff for nice, neat little girls. But at twenty bucks you might expect a little more for your money. The animation is poor by Disney’s standards with the static, rendered backgrounds jarring with the fluidity of the characters in the foreground. The stories work adequately as a half-assed Aesop’s fable, but there isn’t much in the way of overall excitement to generate the “Can we watch it again, mommy? Can we??” that a kids DVD title should provide.

That said, if you’re particularly flush then go ahead and indulge because this series fuels the purest kind of fantasy a child can have, where anything is possible and the world a wondrous place of limitless potential. Three or four years from now, when ten minutes alone on the internet exposes them to the sickest, nastiest shit you could ever imagine, you’ll wish you had this time back.

DVD Bonus Features

Truly miserly; two interactive select-and-click games (one for each adventure) that a toddler will master, and tire of, in minutes. There is also the now customary digital copy. Also included is an animated music video from Beauty and the Beast