Thus, he is king, no harm done to the royal treasury, and everyone lives happily after. Preminger will then sashay his way into the Royal Court, armed with tons and tons of stolen gold, and seek the Queen’s hand in marriage with the promise of returning the gold to the kingdom’s treasury. But Preminger’s plan continues: if he can, at that point, kidnap Princess Anneliese thus insuring no marriage can take place, the kingdom will remain bankrupt and the Queen will grow more and more anxious to seek a financial solution. It follows the Queen will try to marry off her daughter Anneliese to a wealthy suitor (see: another King) in order to consolidate the losses with a more powerful kingdom. How would that work? Well, if the kingdom can mine no more gold, Preminger reasons the kingdom will go bankrupt. ::Deep Breath:: So, here goes: The Queen’s top advisor Preminger has been stealing gold from the kingdom’s mine for years so he can one day be King. Unlike Twain’s novel, which centered around two clever young men agreeing to change lives temporarily out of sheer fascination, Lau’s take on the story is a little more complicated. Thus, the title of the movie.īut the similarities to Mark Twain’s original The Prince and the Pauper end there. Enter stage left, William Lau.īelieve it or not, this is as visually clever as Mattel gets.īPP picks up into the early adulthood of two identical (but not related) women born in a magical kingdom one is the princess (Anneliese), one is a pauper (Erika). Someone who could shed some new insight into a story about dolls. Why should they sit on a pillow in the living room and hear the same message again, but over ninety minutes? And why should parents pay to give their children the privilege? Don’t make audiences pay for something they can get for free.įor the 2004 entry in the Barbie series, Mattel needed a fresh voice.
![barbie princess and the pauper birthmark barbie princess and the pauper birthmark](http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/UBqSe6lgCto/hqdefault.jpg)
Kids can find these sort of belabored points on Nick Jr any day of the week.
![barbie princess and the pauper birthmark barbie princess and the pauper birthmark](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/13/c3/0a/13c30a8a9d7b137ee4aa184dafe02f9c.jpg)
They don’t even like to hear it once!Īnd there’s another problem with that. Kids don’t want to hear the same tired lecture twice if they don’t have to. The problem is, these are messages children will have picked up a half-hour before Kelly can even confirm it. Instead of adding a dash of whimsy a la The Princess Bride, the bookends cheapened the films. Hurley made them inconsequential to the story.įurther, in all three films, Owen Hurley and his cracknut team relegated the moral messages to bookends featuring a seriously traumatized Kelly. Barbie in the Nutcracker has the good sense of making children sound like children, but in turn, Mr. In Barbie as Rapunzel, they’re mysteriously short teenagers. These munchkin-sized doll-people were often never treated as children at all.
![barbie princess and the pauper birthmark barbie princess and the pauper birthmark](https://i.etsystatic.com/31356297/r/il/a17a8f/3427976766/il_300x300.3427976766_q9z7.jpg)
However, Owen Hurley’s biggest blunder lay in the way he dealt with children in his stories.
![barbie princess and the pauper birthmark barbie princess and the pauper birthmark](http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/9800000/Barbie-Princess-and-the-Pauper-barbie-princess-and-the-pauper-9820148-952-1449.jpg)
When he didn’t deal with ballet (see: Barbie as Rapunzel), he threw everything and the kitchen sink into the screen: Witches? Dragons? Magic wands? Pick one, Hurley! He had a fixation on inserting Barbie into ballet, but it never worked. His visual language was disappointedly limited. His film’s morals were blatantly obvious at best and nonsensical at worst. Hurley’s three entries in the Barbie oeuvre were a trip, stumble, and wipe-out away from a smooth transition into cinema history. Hurley (to be a fly on the wall in that dollhouse!) but I think we could safely assume that somebody over his head sat down and watched Barbie of Swan Lake. Not a spectacular feat by any means, but a notable triumph considering BPP was the first film to arrive after the stepping down of Barbie auteur Owen Hurley. Obligatory Pink Vehicle: A pink horse carriage, of course!īarbie as the Princess and the Pauper (hereon referred to as BPP) is to its release date, the best Barbie film of the series.