Strange Magic

A fairy princess (voice by Evan Rachel Wood) swears off love when she catches her self-centered fiancé cheating; meanwhile, in the neighboring Dark Wood, the insect-like Bog King (Alan Cumming) conspires to wipe out love altogether. Directed by multi-Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom from a story by George Lucas (that billionaire master of derivative cinema), this animated musical fantasy is a sometimes uneasy mash-up of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Beauty and the Beast and Glee, with a nonstop parade of jukebox song samples (heavily weighted toward '50s and '60s pop), all of them quite well sung. The animation, which has a look of Arthur Rackham mixed with Maxfield Parrish, is fluid, visually striking and, for some strange reason, vaguely alarming. All in all, there are far worse family movies.