Rebellious Film Review: Fractured Fairy Tale 

Rebellious delivers an inoffensive but predictable modern fairytale, where even the subversions of the tropes themselves follow familiar trends.

The story follows a typical fairy tale setup. A princess named Mina (Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld) is daring, adventurous, and athletic. She wishes to marry her beloved Ronan (Dan Edwards), but her father (David Wills) wishes to have her married to a prince to secure political power. When Mina is abducted by the wizard Kezabor (Pete Zarustica), Ronan must team up with two other princes and a talking bear named Bjorn (Jon St. John) to free her.

The plot feels trite, but with a decent script, this could actually work in the film’s favor as it lends to great opportunities for parody and revision. Unfortunately, Rebellious does not manage to do this. In an attempt to spin the story, it ends up playing things straight, with the formula and conventions of one of these stories continuing as one would expect. While not bogged down by contemporary references or vulgar humor, it instead just alludes to how certain ideas of the stories are outdated without fixing them for modern times. 

Flat characterization holds back the movie from its true potential. Mina’s rebellious nature and sassy, sarcastic personality do not play into the story as much as the title would suggest. She does resist capture and free the other princesses, but she does not take initiative in her own story or is even the cause of her own rescue. Ronan still does most of the heroism himself. Speaking of, Ronan is a flat character in his own right. He claims to get by on his intellect and ability to read when the other princes do not, but none of this is shown on film. He seems to just luck into his good fortune most of the time.

Much of Rebellious still seems derivative in spite of it trying to twist the fairy tale formula. A rebellious princess does not seem as biting or unique as it once did, given how an entire generation has been raised on characters like Jasmine from Aladdin or Merida from Brave. Ronan resembles Kristoff from Disney’s Frozen, both in appearance and in terms of his role in the story. He is meant to be the handsome but unassuming man who rises up and saves the day, but even Frozen managed to play with that convention a little by having Kristoff be more comical in his approach. Ronan takes everything one hundred percent seriously.

A different film would have explored how the familiar can be reworked and try to play up its self-awareness at the absurdity of the tale. Still, all of the familiar beats are included, and there is no winking at the camera or acknowledgement of how these conventions “should” work; they are just utilized because it feels like they have to be. Rebellious feels boring as a deconstructive story in an era where even the fairy tale parodies have themselves been parodied. 

The reason why films like Shrek and Enchanted worked is that they were novel approaches to familiar tales in the wake of the Disney Renaissance, when conventional adaptations of these stories were the norm. Now, almost every animated movie at least tries to be edgy with more active princesses and quippy jokes, leading to stagnation in storytelling. Even Disney now puts twists on their own stories with their assortment of live-action remakes changing the way the originals are told. For Rebellious to stand out, it would have needed to have more of a sense of self-awareness. The story follows beats everyone is familiar with, so there would have needed to be more detail added. 

Extra motivation for Kezabor and an explanation of this world’s magic system would have been interesting at least. It would have given more of a reason to care for the characters and explain why the conventions are the way they are, so in a sense trapping these people in a fairy tale story simply because the world needs these cliches to function. A similar approach was taken in the film Tangled, which added more detail and characterization to turn the familiar story of Rapunzel into something new and enjoyable. If Rebellious had followed that example more, it would have at least been unique. 

Aside from the animation, which is above average, Rebellious does little to stand out among a sea of similar films. If kids want to see it, there is no harm in showing them, but there are better options out there for subversive fairy tales. In spite of its familiarity, there is nothing objectionable in its story and some smiles can be gained from it. It is not a childhood classic on the level of Disney, but an attempt was made. 

Rebellious will be released in UK & Irish cinemas on October 25, 2024.