Richard Crouse

By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada

Strange Magic, a new animated jukebox musical fantasy from George Lucas, follows in the footsteps of Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. All are musicals, all are for kids and all feature a villain geared to make young pulses race.

“I do think we underestimate how much darkness kids can deal with,” says Alan Cumming, who plays the film’s chief baddie, the Bog King,

Inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Strange Magic is set in a fairy world where you can never judge a book by its cover.

Cumming’s character, with his glowing eyes and a skeleton that is more exo than endo, certainly embodies the movie’s message that beauty is only skin deep.

“All these kinds of films are based on a tradition that goes way, way back to the Grimm Brothers,” says Cumming.

“In a way, the reason these stories are told is to teach kids some sort of moral lesson. You have to scare people but ultimately show that he has a nicer side to him.”

Lucas, who has a ‘story by’ and producer credit on the film says, “with the Bog King we did tone him down a bit because it is a delicate balance. We’ve shown it to a lot of kids and most of them aren’t affected by it at all. My daughter, who is only 18 months, saw the trailer with the Bog King in it on a screen, not on a TV and she wasn’t moved by it at all. But of course 18-month-olds aren’t afraid of anything yet.

“Kids are not as fragile as you think they are. All the stuff, that it warps their brains, I’m not sure about that,” he said.

“There is a certain reality to imitative violence, which is monkey see, monkey do, and that is dangerous, but at the same time a well brought up kid doesn’t fall into that.”

Lucas, who has been working on this project on and off for 15 years — “I liked to do it in between working on Star Wars and writing scripts and things”— says there are only three moments in the movie that are “bothersome.”

“It has been my experience with my kids that if you sense something coming up you just put your hand over their eyes and usually they’re faster at doing it than you are.”