Enchanted Tales

Enchanted Tales.....dear god what an exercise in patience. The general idea is two shorts, each highlighting a Disney Princess. Much like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Little Einsteins the characters are pandering and shove the lesson of the story at you with nothing that resembles tact.

First up. Aurora. The characters are a slight departure from how they were in the film, aside from the Queen who has more lines here than in the movie I think! In this short, King Stephen and King Hubert are off to a royal conference. Philip and the Queen also attend, thus leaving Aurora in charge of the kingdom. God help us all. The first couple minutes have two references to the movie title in a row which is quite sigh worthy because things only get shoved at us more as things continue.

Now, King Hubert leaves his speech behind being quite forgetful apparently. The good fairies, like in the movie are eager to help and state this many times to Aurora. She finally makes use of this by asking them to take the speech to Hubert. Before leaving, Merryweather leaves she gives Aurora her wand just in case it's needed.

This is where things lose me. Why does it take three of them to deliver one speech? As it turns out, Aurora is overwhelmed and uses the wand which results in chaos. But what can you expect? Now...in the end she throws a banquet after sticking to it and not taking the easy way out. Again. In the end, Aurora ends the story with the moral pushed one last time.

Moving on is Jasmine's story, where much like the movie she is still unsatisfied with her life in the palace. Yeah, because being rich is such a burden. It turns out she's tired of smiling and waving, though honestly I'd happily do that if it meant living in a palace.

While Jasmine does want to do more challenging things with her life and not have an easy life, she more often comes across in an annoying and whiny manner. It really hampers the ability to care.

We are quickly introduced to Saharah, the horse that once belonged to the Queen and will not let anybody ride him. Her father suggests that Jasmine try her hand at helping to teach. This of course quickly fails when the children scare both her, and her tiger up a tree.

This leads to a rather awkward scene where we see Jasmine bathing in...milk while she has a heart to heart with her newly introduced nanny. We soon reach the problem of the story when Abu accidentally releases Saharah who goes missing. This leads to Jasmine flying off in search of the horse, intent on riding the horse back home.

She enlists the help of her nanny to keep her father from finding out, and the rather unhelpful duo of Abu and Iago who watch her attempts. Of course she rides the horse after earning it's trust through song and arrives back in time to earn praise from her father.

The thing about Jasmine's short is that there is a huge lack of Genie and Aladdin, who are assumed to be off on an adventure of sorts. The very fact that they are missing just goes to show how much more interesting they are over Jasmine. If one or both of them had been present, she would have been overshadowed. This also occurs with Aurora's short by removing Philip the slightly more interesting character and by sending the good fairies off to be absent most of it.