Movie Thoughts: The Magician's Elephant (2023)

• Released: March 10, 2023
• Directed by: Wendy Rogers
  
• Running time: 1 h 39 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

Peter is an orphan who one day dreams that an elephant will re-unite him with his long-lost sister, his last biological family. Through magical means, an elephant does appear in his city, however before he is allowed to use her to find his sister he'll have to preform three impossible feats in order to win the elephant. Peter accepts this challenge, but through the course of them starts to realize that perhaps his own goals aren't everything that matters.

My Thoughts

Not a movie I initially planned on seeing, but with me browsing Netflix while rather bored one day I figured I might as well. It doesn't look bad at all. And wouldn't you know it; it's a solid film. Not perfect, but it has a lot going for it.

First of all, the visuals are great. It isn't super stylized or anything, but it still has a nice style going for it that isn't trying to be super realistic. The elephant does have a slightly more realistic look to her, but the human characters (and other animals) all kind of have a neat unique style going for them and it looks great. The animation is also fantastic, the environments look good and there's even a really visually stunning dream-sequence in the middle.

The characters are also quite nice. Peter isn't exactly the most original or interesting protagonist out there, but you do root for his struggle with him wanting to find his sister and not having any real connection to his adopted father, Vilna. We also get to see some parts from his sister's POV, though she's definitely not the main focus of the movie like Peter is. There's also quite a few enjoyable side characters such as the King, Sister Marie and Leo Matienne. 

I also really appreciate how this movie didn't have a straightforward villain. It would've been so easy to make this yet another "save the wild animal from the poachers/hunters/rich people keeping her captive" plot with bland-one dimensional villains. And while, to an extent, the movie does follow this plot (halfway into the movie Peter gives up trying to save the elephant to find his sister, instead wanting to win her so he can set her free. Otherwise she'd end up in the King's care as his exotic pet), the movie just doesn't do villains. There's antagonists, sure, but no outright bad guys. Which is just super refreshing, especially with a plot where it's so easy to do this.

I was really afraid at first that Vilna, the King and to a lesser extent the Magician were going to be bland one-note villains, but they're not. Vilna definitely seems like a bad guy at first and he doesn't make for the best parent, but he does still genuinely love Peter and only lied to him because he thought the truth would make Peter hurt even more. And he does redeem himself, even starting to support Peter and admitting he was wrong. 

The King, while definitely an antagonist throughout the movie, isn't an outright villain, either. Sure, he is a bit quirky and addicted to adrenaline rushes and wants to keep the elephant for himself, but he's also a man of his word when he says Peter can have the elephant if he succeeds in the challenges. He does try to make them ridiculously difficult and does endanger Peter, so he's definitely the closest to an outright villain the movie has, but the King is still far from a godawful person. He mostly just wants to see the Countess happy again.

And the Magician is honestly just a guy trying to bring back magic and wonder to Baltese after the city lost those long ago. He does cause the inciting incident and ends up breaking an old lady's legs in the process, but he never intended for anything bad to happen and simply wanted to prove himself and bring back the city like it once was. So like, this movie definitely has some antagonists (especially Vilna and the King), but just no outright villains. These are all pretty nuanced characters. Nothing amazing, but they're not one-note villains like I'd expected going in. Which I can really appreciate.

Now, for something I did not care about as much (but aren't terrible or anything): the narrator and at times the dialogue. The movie is narrated (mostly off-screen) by a minor character of the film, the Fortune Teller, though she does at times appear directly to talk to the audience (she's magic, she can do that). Which in and of itself is fine, I don't have a problem with narrators in general. But at times in the movie the narrator will just be saying things that are already made very clear on-screen through the visuals themselves, making the narration feel redundant. There's also one or two occasions where the spoken dialogue by the characters does this, but the narrator also did it a few times. 

Again, I don't mind a narrator and of course dialogue is necessary for the film, but I don't think it should be used to convey what is already clearly show to the audience. This is a family film, but children aren't dense. If we have a scene where we see the chained-up elephant being sad after dreaming about her family and Peter comforting her, we don't need the narrator to say "the elephant misses her family". The audience knows how to think and draw this conclusion ourselves. This happened a few more times. So while I think the narrator works in general  (heck, it's even kind of fun to see the Fortune Teller break the fourth wall and walk around a scene at times), she should've been used more sparingly. And we could've done without those one or two occasions where the dialogue of the characters also conveys what is portrayed on-screen.

Another thing that I think might be an issue for some (but wasn't for me personally) is that this is a very small-scale movie. It takes place in Baltese, a large city in a bigger kingdom, however we don't ever really leave the city. There's one or two scenes that take place outside of it, most of them flashbacks and one the epilogue, but the main story does really take place for 95% just in Baltese itself. For me this wasn't a problem since it was a quite large and interesting-looking location, however I can also see how for some people it might be disappointing. Especially if (at first) it seems that the plot is going to be a journey with the elephant to Peter's sister, only for it to end up being a series of challenges which all take place within the city. The elephant isn't even physically returned to her home by Peter on a journey with him, she's simply transported there through magic. So if you want a larger-scale movie with more diverse locations I totally understand, but I think this worked fine with how it was executed.

Overall this was a neat little movie, not super high-stakes or large-scale but it was pretty good and I enjoyed it. It has good characters and looks great, my only complaint would really be the dialogue and narrator being too egregious at times.