It’s hard to imagine that George Lucas has cared, much, about the fanrevolt he’s faced since
’97 or so, the year he thumbed CGI Colorforms all over the original Star Wars movies. But
there’s one criticism that seems to have stung him: that Lucas, a good Marin County liberal,
populated his headachy space movies with very earthly — and downright shameful
— ethnic stereotypes.
That’s the only complaint that this fiercely independent filmmaker seems to have blinked at.
Almost everything that stank in The Phantom Menace still stank in Revenge of the
Sith, but Jar Jar was mostly long ago/far away, as were those landrbotching
Trade Federation schemers and that highly schnozzed Jewish junkshop proprietor. Twenty years
earlier, in Raiders of the Lost Ark story conferences with Lawrence Kasdan and Steven
Spielberg, Lucas described the enemies of Indiana Jones as “Third World local sleazos. Whether
they’re Mexicans or Arabs or whatever.”
Maybe in the Nineties he finally grew past the oldHollywood assumption — common
in those serials he grew up loving — that the whitedude hero is the norm from which all
villainy deviates. Now he even seems to be trying to make amends. First he produced
Redtails, that wellintentioned but dramatically stiff take on the Tuskegee airmen —
the first Lucas film not to have a white dude or duck as its POV protagonist. And now
comes the fascinating, messy, mostly enjoyable animated princess musical Strange Magic,
sneaking into theaters — like Redtails before it — as a January release that
critics won’t even pretend to take seriously. That’s understandable: This thing looks like Lucas
doing Disney just as Disney’s prepping to do Lucas, and it’s a popjukebox musical, with the
characters singing Elvis and Lady Gaga and ELO. It is, admittedly, unpromising.
It’s also the best Lucas film in 25 years: funny, idiosyncratic, hippydippy, packed with
creatures and visions worth beholding. There’s a headshop beauty to its enchanted forest, and a
fullfledged tripalong sequence in the celebratory climax, and its big sword fight — fairy
princess versus Alan Cumming’s wicked bugman — beats Anakin vs. ObiWan, even
though the duelists are singing. The movie rushes too much, and it doesn’t do enough to make you
care about its world, but it’s never bad, or cloying in that Shrek way, and it’s often
daring. In the end, it’s not the usual violent mayhem that saves the day. It’s love, it’s singing, it’s
open hearts and minds, and it peaks with the heroine and the villain flitting about the forest
together, singing an ELO hit, falling in love with each other after first bonding over how much
they both think they hate love. Strange Magic has true fairy weirdness all through it.
As in Willow or the Ewok movies, Strange Magic offers a goodversusevil
pastoral, this time pitting fairies versus the froglike, lovehating denizens of the “Dark Forest.”
That “Dark,” at first, seems the usual Tolkienstyle swipe at the nonwhite world: The heroes, here,
are a master race of gorgeous, modellike white fairies ruled by a plump and bearded Lucas
lookalike. (Lukealike?) One princess, Marianne (Evan Rachel Wood), has bad luck with her
betrothed, a hammy hunk of a prince. That inspires Marianne to renounce love and give herself an
emowarrior makeover that, seriously, is divine: bracers from leaves; a dress from flameorange
flower petals. Her friends catapult berries from a branch at her, for her to slice in half as sword
practice.
These fairies are attended by comedy sidekick elves, all brownskinned and Trolldoll haired.
One of these, a chap named Sonny (Elijah Kelley), has to do some ‘fraidycat shtick, but he
eventually becomes one of the film’s heroes. And once Strange Magic dashes its light-
versusdark story to the rocks and instead becomes a goof on Midsummer Night’s
Dream–style romantic mixups, Sonny gets to be a Pucklike figure, a character type
with no precedent in Lucas.
But that masterrace setup: I admit, I wondered out loud at first whether they even had
meetings at Lucasfilm. Surely someone in the production must have noticed the film’s
disquieting race/caste system! Turns out I had too little faith: Once the love potions get uncorked,
all propriety is upended. Better still: When the corks go back in, the old order isn’t restored. The
princesses wind up betrothed, happily, outside their class, and it’s left to Old Man Lucas himself to
speak the moral: “Never judge someone by how he or she looks.” Then, to drive home how this
lesson isn’t always as easy as it should be, especially for aging boomers, the Lucas character covers
his face so he doesn’t have to look at all the Others his daughters want to marry. Chalk one up for
the local sleazos.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2015.
