If you're planning on watching this movie, watch at your own risk, because it is *painful* to sit through. The film involves a vengeful wizard who curses a princess to exist as a swan by day until her prince declares his undying love, which is the blandest story line I've ever heard of. The plot is generic. The characters are bland. The main character looks exactly like Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. And the songs are insipid. The voice acting straight up sucks. By all means, stay as far away from this movie as humanly possible.

This was one of those cartoons I had heard about so many times, and I knew at least one of the actors doing a voice in it, I knew it wasn't going to be Disney standard quality of animation or storytelling, but I was still willing to try it, from director Richard Rich (The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron). Basically Princess Odette (Michelle Nicastro) and Prince Derek (Howard McGillin) were forced by their parents as children to many summers together in the hope they that they would grow become close and eventually fall in love, they hates each other, but as adults they may finally to develop mutual attraction, but after a little offence he causes she is not sure he truly loves her for more than just her beauty. Years ago vengeful sorcerer Lord Rothbart (Jack Palance) was banished from the kingdom for attempting to cast evil spells and take the kingdom for himself, but he has returned to take revenge, disguised as the "Great Creature" he can turn into he manages to kidnap Odette, and fatally wounds her father King William (Dakin Matthews), Derek vows to train himself to kill the beast that killed the king and save the life of his true love. While Derek's training goes on and believing that the princess is still alive for him to save and convince of his love, Odette has had a curse placed on her by the evil enchanter, at his castle lair on Swan Lake she will turn into a swan in the daylight, and if she does not to return to the water when the moonlight shines she will not temporarily turn human for the night time, Rothbart will only lift the curse if she agrees to marry him so he can legally take the kingdom, she continues to refuse. While cursed Odette makes friends with friendly tortoise Speed (Steven Wright), frog Jean- Bob (John Cleese) who believes he is also cursed and if kissed will become a human prince, and the puffin bird named Puffin (Steve Vinovich), they sympathise with her wanting to return to the kingdom as a human and be with her true love, Derek refuses to let her mother Queen Uberta (Sandy Duncan) make him marry someone unless he truly loves them. Prince Derek does eventually find Odette as the swan, but he wrongly assumes she is the Great Creature, but he does see her turn temporarily human at night, but she is trapped by Rothbart before she can make any escape and stop the proposed bride seeking and potential wedding ceremony for the prince, and with the evil sorcerer disguised as the princess he hopes to make the prince express his true love to the fake, therefore allowing him to take the kingdom. In the end Rothbart in the form of the Great Creature is defeated by Derek firing the one arrow through his heart, the swan curse of Odette is lifted, and the couple finally embrace their true love for each other, marry, unite the kingdom and the two families and they all live happily ever after. Also starring Liz Callaway as Princess Odette (singing voice), Mark Harelik as Lord Rogers, James Arrington as Chamberlain, Davis Gaines as Chamberlain (singing voice), Joel McKinnon Miller as Bromley and Brian Nissen as the Narrator. You can tell by the animation style that this film was a rather low budget, the story does have it's fair share of predictable and cheesy moments, and most of the songs are lame, but the voice casting is chosen well enough, Palance making a good villain, and Cleese and Wright adding the needed comic relief, I suppose it will entertain most of the family, not a bad animated musical fairytale. It was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Original Song for "Far Longer than Forever". Worth watching!

I remember being 8 years old and watching this movie endlessly. I also recall singing "For longer than forever" over and over again (I'm such a sucker for that kind of songs). Recently, I had been trying to recall the song unsuccessfully, and when I found it on Netflix, I jumped in for old time's sake and because I wanted to hear the song.Watching it 12 years later resulted in disappointment regarding the plot line, character development, animation, voice acting and lyrics. That may seem to imply I hated it, but I didn't. It is actually more than the sum of it's parts, mostly, I think, because it follows the formula of every princess movie that ever existed, and that worked out.I also think something that really saves this movie is the sidekick ensemble. Jean Bob + Speed work very well together and are a lot of fun. Puffin is very likable. Bromley and Rogers are a very fun companion to Prince Derek, and both villains are indeed very entertaining. The scenes containing these are very fun.Music-wise, it is also very formulaic, borrowing incredibly from Beauty and the Beast (in my opinion). It works, though. I think the ideas for the songs were very clever, although the execution was not very well done. For Longer than Forever is good. Not great, but you will find yourself humming it every once in a while.I think children will enjoy this, and if you take it lightheartedly, you will like it too. I also noticed this is a good movie for watching over and over and over... It's easy to switch in and out, and works well being played on the background. I really understand why I loved this as a child.

OK, so "The Swan Princess" is another children's movie. When I saw it, I thought that it was really neat that John Cleese provided the voice of the frog, and I later found out that Jack Palance (once known for "Shane", now known for "City Slickers") provided the voice of the villain. Who would have envisioned those two plus Steven Wright and Frank Welker (Fred on "Scooby-Doo" and Ray on "The Real Ghostbusters") in an animated feature? It wasn't until years after I saw the movie that I found out what the source material was: while in St. Petersburg, I attended a production of Pyotr Chaikovsky's "Swan Lake" in the Mariinsky Theater and realized that it was the same characters. Of course, what stuck in my mind most of all was the haunting theme song. That ballet is more recently recognizable as the subject of "Black Swan" (which I haven't seen).Anyway, the movie's nothing particularly special.Michelle Nicastro, who provided the voice of Odette, was an opera singer (she died of cancer last year). Howard McGillin, who provided the voice of Derek, was one of the people who played the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera".