This fourth installment in the Swan Princess franchise was released fourteen years after the third one. By that time, one might think we could at least get something decent with a little thought put into it. WRONG!

Richard Rich turned his not good but decent and perfectly serviceable franchise into simply an abomination to animation itself by transforming it into cheap and hideous 3D computer animation which makes especially Odette creepy to look at! How could the same director masacre his own passion project so brutally, because it's not just the animation style which is ugly and lazy?

Just to name a few of them story contradicts the earlier SP movies' continuity all too many times, the same one-note gags are repeated from the previous movies and new absolutely terrible non-sensical pop culture references have been added. The orchestral music score and the songs was the highlights of the first movie in particular, but is now replaced with heavily auto-tuned pop/R&B- tunes with the most obvious use of the same singer for several characters.

Finally I must add that the fact that it is a Christmas movie is also a disgrace to the spirit of Christmas, because the symbolism it shows is so shallow and consumerism oriented that I simply feel offended. Hallelujah! Insulting both the franchise and the Spirit of Christmas. THIS MOVIE IS A JOKE! DO NOT WATCH IF YOU VALUE YOUR MENTAL WELL-BEING!

As a child and now even as an adult I enjoy watching the original Swan Princess Trilogy. So when I heard about this I was excited, until I watched the trailer. Could barely make it through that. It went from beautiful animation to sucky CGI. It hardly even looks like the original characters. Don't waste your time thinking this is another beautiful Swan Princess movie because it isn't. I mean really, Lord Rothbart's ghost is coming back to haunt the castle. If I were you I would stick with the original three movies if you are wanted your Swan Princess fix. I sure once u watch the trailer you will agree with me as well. Please say if this was helpful to you or not.

The Swan Princess was a childhood favourite, and from a personal perspective still very enjoyable now. The two sequels that followed weren't as good but had some nice things about them(Secret of the Castle may have had a bad villain and Mystery of the Enchanted Kingdom some animation goofs- plus in all three films Derek has never been the strongest of characters- but the songs were serviceable and at least made some effort to be true to the style of the music in the first film, had some fun dialogue and Uberta is hilarious). All three are still much better than The Swan Princess Christmas which was not only unnecessary but of poor quality judging it as a stand-alone.

For starters, the animation is pretty terrible and reminiscent of a bad computer game from 20 years ago, it is very flatly coloured and textured, with very awkward facial expressions and Jean Bob and Speed are very stiffly animated. Even worse were the songs, not only were they forgettable and irritating but they were ill-placed, made no effort to be true to the music style of the first Swan Princess and sounded like they were sung by people from high-school/Disney Channel(Autotune and all, and it didn't fit the characters at all),the manger scene could have been cute but was painful instead.

The incidental score fares s tad better but still lacked spark or sense of danger, and you miss the classical orchestrations of the previous outings. The chime bells playing Far Longer than Forever was the one time where the movie harkened back to the original film which was nice admittedly. The dialogue lacked anything that was genuinely funny and heartfelt, it all felt stilted with some witless humour(Uberta was a bland character this time round when she was one of the high points of both sequels, and strangely Rodgers worked marginally smoother with Bromley which is saying little) and heartfelt moments that verged on overwrought, I personally felt nothing about Derek dying and coming back to life again.

If the film had any signs of potential from the get go it was in the story, even if it was conceptually derivative except with Christmas thrown into the mix. Unfortunately the potential doesn't translate to screen very well at all. The story is very tired- very little sense of charm, enchantment and even heart-warming Christmas spirit- and doesn't make clear where abouts between the previous three films it's meant to be set, it did have potential but uses it poorly. The film is fairly short but feels longer than it is. The characters seem off, Number 9 is the best character here and is actually at times more devious than Rothbart. While Odette lacks charm(actually really with each sequel she got blander and lost her feistiness),Derek is as wet as a drip, Jean Bob, Speed and Puffin are not very funny, Uberta and Rodgers are blandly fleshed out and Rothbart doesn't exude any sense of threat at all and comes off like a childish clown. The voice acting is going through the motions quality, including Ben 10s' Yuri Lowenthal for Derek. The film really suffers without the presence of the late Michelle Nicastro as Odette and few of them sound like the original voice actors(Speed and Jean-Bob are the exceptions).

In conclusion, very poor and it is the only Swan Princess film that came off really badly. 1/10 Bethany Cox