I don’t know how popular Robert Munsch is in the ‘States, but in Canada, children’s writers don’t come much bigger. So when I found that there was DVD of The Paper Bag Princess – which I consider to be his best book - I just had to reach out and bring it into my collection. You’d think that by now I’d have have developed some good instincts for buying DVDs, but I think I might have been way off the mark on this one. Maybe it was my love of Munsch, or maybe it was my blind desire to somehow involve my daughter in my hobby (obsession), or maybe it was that I was so jazzed at finding it that I didn’t even bother thinking whether I should pick it up.
For the uninitiated, or those for whom it’s been a while, The Paper Bag Princess is about a young girl named Elizabeth who sets off to rescue her betrothed, Prince Ronald from a marauding dragon while wearing nothing but a paper bag. In the end, Elizabeth not only proves she’s brave and super clever, but much like Scott Pilgrim, she learns the power of self respect. It’s a simple and universal story, and should have been a cinch to adapt – but in the case of the DVD it went wrong in a number of places.
First, someone in marketing thought it would be a good idea to get the dragon to rap everything he said. It makes sense in a way, since everyone else sings most of what they’re saying, and it was made in the 90s, when those kind of shenanigans happened all the time, but it’s terribly dated and painful to watch at times.
I get the impression that someone got their hands on the 1/2″ or 3/4″ master tapes and thought they could squeeze a few bucks out of them.
The second and probably more obvious problem is the quality of the transfer. There are audio and colour shifting problems throughout, probably due to tracking problems with the source tape. I get the impression that someone got their hands on the 1/2″ or 3/4″ master tapes and thought they could squeeze a few bucks out of them.
My last problem is with the slightly modified ending – which I won’t totally give away. I think the tweaks to the final confrontation between Elizabeth, the Dragon and Ronald undermines the spirit of her new-found independence, which is at the heart of why people love this story so much, and without that, there isn’t much for this story to stand on. Interweaving other fairy tales into it was cute, but I think it needed more of a Munsch touch than what seems like the mass-produced TV treatment.
For less than $10 from Amazon, it wasn’t exactly a scam – but out of all the films in my childrens collection (and perhaps my collection as a whole) this one rates at the bottom.
Steve gives it a Coaster
