The Magic Riddle
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 You're better off watching Shrek: The Musical instead.
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"The animation is ugly, the story's a mess, the characters are obnoxious, the pacing is rushed, the songs are forgettable, the magic riddle has nothing magical about it whatsoever, combining all these stories into some grandmother's self-insertion fanfic is disturbing; and speaking of disturbing, what the hell is up with all the phallic noses in this movie?! I'm sorry, but who's bright idea was it to design these characters like this? I don't think I've ever seen a kids movie that made me feel this awkward! If you wanna share these classic stories with your children, I highly recommend you share with them the real stories, and leave this movie alone to be forgotten."
— Bobsheaux
The Magic Riddle is a 1991 Australian fantasy animated musical feature film directed by Yoram Gross and written by Yoram Gross, Leonard Lee, and John Palmer. The film features elements of famous fairytales including Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, The Ugly Duckling, The Three Little Pigs, and Pinocchio. Robyn Moore provides the voice of Cindy and various other characters.
Plot
Cindy, short for Cinderella, lives with her widowed stepmother and two stepsisters, Bertha and Ertha. Cindy is forced to do all of the housework and is effectively a servant. The widow hates Cindy because when her late Grandfather died, he hid his will which the widow knows passes all the family inheritance to Cindy. The widow purposely keeps Cindy busy so that she won't find the will, giving the widow time to find it first. The widow is also planning to marry her favorite daughter, Bertha, to a handsome young man named Phillippe, though he is smitten with Cindy.
One night, Cindy falls asleep before finishing her chores, but an old lady sneaks into the house to finish the chores for her. Ertha, Cindy's kinder stepsister, encounters the old lady, who reveals that she is Cindy's Grandmother, and was kicked out of the house by the widow after Grandfather died. The same thing happens the following night, but the widow wakes up and chases Grandmother away. Ertha, who witnessed everything, tells Cindy about it.
The widow is afraid that Grandmother will help Cindy find the will. Following the advice of her magic mirror, the widow puts on a salesman disguise and visits Grandmother in the woods, tricking her into entering The Castle of One Hundred Doors, from which there is no escape. Cindy, dressed in a red riding hood, arrives at Grandmother's cottage too late and is chased away by a "wolf", which is actually the widow in disguise.
Cindy sits by a lake, telling her hopes to an ugly duckling, unaware that Phillippe is listening. Phillippe reveals himself and gives her a ring as a token, but their meeting is interrupted by the widow, who orders Cindy to work. While in the barn, Cindy discovers the widow's wolf costume and realize what happened. Bertha, who is jealous of Cindy, chases the pigs away from the farm and blames Cindy for it. Ertha advises Cindy to escape to Grandmother's cottage, which she does. There Cindy discovers seven wooden dwarfs and one wooden puppet Pinocchio. They come alive when she kisses them, and they tell her that the widow took Grandmother away.
The widow wants Cindy back at the house working for her. She discovers Cindy's music box and decides to lure her back by holding a masked ball. Cindy wants to go, as it is a chance to see Phillippe. The dwarfs make her a costume, but warn her that since her mask is made of snow it will melt at midnight. At the ball, Cindy's disguise works and she gets to dance with Phillippe. Meanwhile, Ertha and Pinocchio dance together. When the clock strikes twelve, Cindy's disguise melts and she runs away to escape the widow, her friends following close behind.
When the widow mocks Ertha for falling for Pinocchio, Ertha retaliates by telling Phillippe that Cindy can be found at Grandmother's house. He heads out to find her but finds the Castle of One Hundred Doors instead. The dwarfs also find the Castle, but they too get lost inside and unable to escape.
The widow goes to the cottage wearing another disguise devised by her magic mirror, this time pretending to be Pinocchio's mother. The widow hypnotizes Cindy with a magic apple to fall asleep, and in the commotion, the widow accidentally falls into a well. Pinocchio, now alone, searches for help and stumbles upon the Castle. When he enters, one of his shoes is caught on a nail and starts to unravel. Eventually, the Grandmother is found, and everyone groups up and follows the trail out.
When they arrive back at the cottage, Cindy is woken up by a kiss from Phillippe. Grandmother explains to Cindy about the will, and that the answer is in his Magic Riddle, a poem which ends with: "Only Pinocchio knows". It turns out that the will is inside Pinocchio's nose. Grandmother reads the will, confirming that all of Grandfather's possessions go to Cindy. Cindy and Phillippe's wedding is held at what used to be the widow's house. After the celebrations, the dwarfs and Pinocchio turn back into wood, their task completed. But when Ertha kisses Pinocchio, he comes back to life to be with her.
Why It Would Never Solve the Riddle
- The pacing of the film drags way too long and it can get boring very quickly.
- The movie starts out with Grandma giving a narration at the beginning of this movie which makes absolutely no sense. The reason why Grandma is narrating this at all is because she narrates the beginning, but they never go along with the narration aspect throughout the movie.
- False advertising: Cindy's horse has yellow fur along with two pigs, but in the actual movie, the horse has grey fur and there's an extra third pig.
- The animation is less than favorable to look at, constantly looking like it was made in haste with the character designs and is very flatly colored.
- The plot is confusingly messy and feels very over-stretched, complete with plot strands that either feels underdeveloped or pointless.
- Poor grasp of the source material: some of the fairytales being shown are either mostly feel underused at times or aren't handed properly at all.
- When Pinocchio's nose grows, it's indicating that he told a lie. But when he tells another lie, even when he's just joking around or protecting Cindy, his nose doesn't grow for some reason.
- Towards the end of the film, Ertha kisses a petrified Pinocchio and becomes a real boy, which doesn't even happen in the original Pinocchio story.
- The build-up of introducing Grandma as the "Fairy Godmother" stand-in is a rather missed opportunity, as it was the dwarfs who helped Cindy get ready for the ball.
- There's no real wolf to play the role of the "Big Bad Wolf", instead the widow and a sheep dress up as wolves to play the parts.
- The widow tries to hypnotize Cindy with an apple rather than just giving it to her to eat it like in the original Snow White story. Heck, even Pinocchio pointed this out.
- The Ugly Duckling and the Three Little Pigs serve no purpose to be in this movie. They just make an excuse for Cindy to sing about something.
- The Seven Dwarfs were originally made as toys for Cindy before making them as lawn ornaments.
- Misleading title: The riddle itself isn't magical whatsoever, and moreover it's not even a riddle at all. It's just simple information.
- The Norwegian title is dubbed Den magiske dragen (The Magic Dragon), despite the fact that there's no dragons in this movie.
- The film has so many unexplained questions that where never answered or plot holes that were never filled in properly, leaving many of it's audience feeling confused.
- How did Grandma survive in The Castle of a Hundred Doors without food or water for days when she could've died from thirst and starvation?
- How does a simple kiss bring wooden sculptures to life anyway? And how does wedding bells turn them back to their wooden state?
- Why did Grandpa leave everything in his will to Cindy? His wife still alive, but he didn't leave anything to her? And how does the inheritance go to the widow if no one finds the will?
- Why doesn't the widow just go and get Cindy at Grandma's cottage instead of wasting her time planning a fake ball to lure her back if she knows the one place where she's hiding?
- What happened to Cindy's parents and her Grandfather, and how did they died?
- Why would Cindy's dad ever marry the widow in the first place despite her abusive nature and just straight-up looking grotesque?
- Phillippe's been to the widow's house multiple times already, but he's never met Cindy, who lives with her.
- The dwarves somehow know that the widow took Grandma away, even though they don't have any evidence that she did kidnap Grandma. And how do they know the widow if they never met her yet?
- The widow's name is never revealed as everyone just calls her "the widow" and if that's the case, who would name their child "the widow" anyway?
- Apart from the the ball scene, why doesn't Cindy ever wear shoes?
- Cindy's cat, Puss is a mute character, though at one point he does sing, so does that mean he's a talking cat or a regular cat?
- The slapstick humor that the film tries to imitate isn't that funny, as it mostly falls flat and boring most of the time.
- The love and relationship between Phillippe and Cindy don't seem very genuine, as it feels forced while having a lack of chemistry.
- Bad Moral: The film's message which is that you should only marry someone if it means that you can get a bunch of stuff that you didn't even want is a terribly loathsome advice.
- Ugly character designs for most of the characters, with the widow and Pinocchio being the absolute worst offenders.
- The widow's three main disguises look so crappy and cheaply made, she makes The Master of Disguise himself pull it off better in comparison.
- The chair salesman looks like an offensive Jewish stereotype.
- The wolf disguise doesn’t even look remotely close to an actual wolf and looks more like a knockoff dog costume you'd buy from Wish.com.
- The mama Pinocchio disguise is so ridiculous, that even Pinocchio would realize that he never has a mother to begin with and could see right through her disguise.
- There are a dozen of inappropriate moments within the movie:
- The scene with the stepsisters, who are naked in the bathtub together while squirting each other with toothpaste.
- The widow flashes her panties on screen and her breasts constantly fly around.
- Speaking of panty shots, Grandma has one when being chased by the widow while the stepsisters have several shots.
- A creepy line of dialogue where Ertha admits she is in love with Pinocchio which is considered pedophilia.
- The scene when Phillippe is kissing Cindy's unconscious body is super creepy.
- Phillippe getting sexual harassed multiple times by Bertha.
- Pinocchio and the widow (when she disguises herself as Pinocchio's mother) have their noses looking way too phallic.
- Similar to Quest for Camelot, the movie itself is one of the many unoriginal Disney rip-offs that tried to cash in on the Disney Renaissance at the time.
- Speaking of Disney, the movie feels like it's stealing elements from a few Disney properties here and there.
- Phillippe's design is an obvious carbon copy of Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid.
- Two of the dwarfs, Goodby (red dwarf) and Rudy (burgundy pink dwarf) look a little too similar to Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
- In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment during the masked ball scene, one of the party guests wears Mickey Mouse ears.
- There are tons of animation errors that are easy to spot throughout the movie.
- There are hideous white lines on the characters, which is seen as distracting.
- Due to the animators not tracing a line on Pinocchio's neck, whenever he twists his head he looks like he is possessed, a la The Exorcist.
- There are moments where the animation is clipping out.
- Some scenes are recycled in the movie. For example, the scene where the animals are hiding in the barn is used several times.
- During the scene where Cindy and her friends are escaping from the widow's house, you can see Bertha looking like a hulking figure with a barrel chest.
- A lot of off-model instances. Many of the scenes have many differing art styles and direction, given that the main directors all have their different styles. As a result, scenes will look very off and include lots of animation errors.
- There's a number of continuity errors:
- After Cindy falls into a death-like sleep, she's lying in a position that's radically different from we last saw her.
- When Pinocchio gives his shoes to Cindy and her losing the other one at the widow's house, he somehow managed to get his other shoe back in the very next scene without any explanation on how he got it back.
- The Three Little Pigs have inconsistent character designs. When we first see them during Cindy's song "Cindy Do It Now", they have the same clone designs as one another. But later on during the "Pig Song", all three pigs have different shapes and sizes compared to one another. And to make matters worst is that the clone designs for the pigs were the original designs for them in the film's trailer, yet the animators did not even bothering to change them in the final version.
- There are also other errors including recycled characters, poor lip-syncing, perspective errors, and even lazy sound editing.
- Forgettable soundtrack with some having minor problems, including:
- "Try Not to Cry So" is a hypocritical song about Cindy being an "ugly duckling" and wondering when she'll turn into a swan, when in reality she's a beautiful young woman in contrast to her ugly old hag of a stepmother.
- "Mean Mean Mean", while a catchy tune, is a poorly-written villain song.
- "Pig Song" is pretty much just a lazy retelling of The Three Little Pigs story, and it also pads out the movie's running time.
- All of the characters have some form of one dimensional trope (with the exception of Ertha), with Cindy being the damsel trope, Philippe being the heroic prince trope, the widow being the villain trope and the list just keeps on coming.
- Crappy, stupidly written dialogue. A few of the biggest notable examples are listed here:
- Cindy's first encounter with the "wolf" after "he" tells her to watch out for snakes only to reply herself: "What are snakes?" Honestly, is Cindy that stupid of a person that she starts to question herself of what a snake is this late in her age?
- The scene with Pinocchio is chasing a butterfly while saying: "If I'll get a hold of you, I'm gonna sit on your nose!" which is just a baffling insult, especially towards a butterfly of all things.
- During Phillippe's song "Girl in the Snow White Dress", he sings along the line: "I'll never stop 'till I find her, the girl in the snow-white dress, where did she come from, where did she go? There's so much about her that I don't know." Ok, so the question, "Where did she go?" everyone can understand, since Ertha only said she was at her Grandma's house out in the woods, which is kind of a vague location. But... "Where did she come from?" You were just at her house moments ago, you dumbass!
- Ertha's one line of delivery when helping out Cindy by giving her a red cape: "Take this red riding hood cape. You won't be recognized." Recognized by whom exactly? She's not like a wanted criminal or anything, for Pete's sake!
- Just like with The Magic Voyage, the film contains scenes that have very unnecessary loud noises.
- There's this weird time skip within the film. It starts out what looks like during the spring time, then it quickly turns into winter and then back into spring again.
- Anachronism: It's kind of hard to tell exactly when this movie is supposed to take place. You may think it takes place somewhere what it seems to be 19th century Europe, but it doesn't because it has some modern day influences, which just makes it even more confusing.
- The animal sidekicks don't serve any point of purpose and feel like they were shoehorned into the film's plot at the last minute.
- In the original concept trailer, Cindy actually stands up to her stepmother by refusing to do her chores, and decides to run away for a better life on her own accord, growing an independent and rebellious attitude. A scene in the concept trailer shows that she is facing a challenge that she must escape on her own. As a result, her happily ever after is much more deserved and well-earned as she contributed something then. However, this was only the concept trailer as the final movie would cut those scenes out for whatever reason. And as a result of this change, Cindy would revert back to her one dimensional personality of being a damsel-in-distress and everyone would forever be beyond comprehension as to why they didn't stick to the original formula.
Redeeming Qualities
- Grandma is the only tolerable and likable character, despite her flaw being a plot device than an actual character in the film.
- Ertha can be seen as somewhat likable (except for the aforementioned pedophilic stuff with Pinocchio). The most evident where she's more willing to help Cindy, decides to take a stand against the widow and help Philippe after being refused to search for Pinocchio and being insulted at.
- It has a nice little original twist on the Cinderella story, with Ertha being a kind, friendly stepsister to Cindy. Also, as a side note, this movie predates this idea before Disney had one in Cinderella II: Dreams Come True.
- "Ordinary Miracles" is the only decent song that's worth listening to; unfortunately it's at the very end of the movie when the credits start to roll.
- Seeing the widow and Bertha getting punished for all of their misdeeds by becoming Cindy's maids is pretty satisfying.
- The Castle of One Hundred Doors has the best scenes in the entire movie, as the design of the castle itself from inside out looks cool and spooky, and it even has twisted rooms that disappear and reappear at random.
- It's very impressive to have three voice actors do all of the characters in one film, and the voice acting itself is decent.
- It doesn't fall into the "overly money grubbing villain" cliché much, as there is a moment when the widow does have somewhat of a reason: she's just trying to support herself and her own daughters.
- Some of the backgrounds are nicely detailed and it does become above serviceable.
- While disguised as the wolf, the widow having the ability to change her voice was actually pretty smart of her.
- The interactions between Cindy and her animal sidekicks are admittedly adorable.
- The dwarfs, Cindy, Philippe, and Grandma probably have, by far, the best-looking character designs.
- The idea of mixing up fairytales does sound like a interesting concept, despite it's poor execution.
Reception
The film received criticism for its animation, as well as being seen as being a carbon copy of several Disney films; in the years since its release, it has gained a cult following.
Trivia
- For some very odd reason, Cindy is the only character whose barefooted throughout the majority of the film. In fact, one might assumed they theorized that the animators probably had a foot fetish.
- Even though it was released on VHS at the time, it never was released on DVD. However, The movie is free to watch on YouTube and cartoon streaming sites like Kimcartoon and Watch Cartoons Online.
- "Ordinary Miracles" was performed by Julie Anthony.
- Yoram Gross's The Magic Riddle had a more international flavor than his previous children's films made in Australia. It was based on an original story he came up with, and is a mixture of fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and others.
- The film was also given a theatrical release in the Philippines, with an advanced screening held at the Shangri-La Plaza's The Cinema on January 2, 1994.
- In one of the scenes shown during The Castle of One Hundred Doors, there is a direct reference to the famous painting "Endless Staircase" by M.C. Escher.
- There were a number of changes that were made during the production of the original trailer:
- Hansel and Gretel (the widow's pet dogs) were originally bulldogs before being changed to pit bulls.
- Puss (Cindy's pet cat) had a different voice before the final version of the film.
- The widow only wore a wolf mask.
- Cindy hugs the dwarfs instead of kissing them to life.
- Cindy originally wore a flower dress instead of the snow white dress.
- Phillippe, Puss, the three little pigs, and some of the dwarfs had different designs before the finished cut.
- There are a dozen of strange foreign titles that the film was given from all over the world:
- The German title Cindy und das Zauberrätsel (Cindy and the Magic Puzzle)
- The Norwegian title Den magiske dragen (The Magic Dragon)
- The Hungarian title Cindy meséi (Cindy's Tales)
- The French title La légende de Cindy (The Legend of Cindy)
- The Brazilian title A Charada Mágica (The Magic Riddler)
- The Polish title Magiczne zaklęcie (Magic Spell)
- The Italian title Fantasia Magica (Magic Fantasy)
- The Swedish title Den magiska gåtan (The Magic Mystery)
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