Review: “The Magician’s Elephant’ Lacks Magic And Excitement

Photo from Netflix

THE MAGICIAN’S ELEPHANT (2023)

Entertaining as it may be for a younger audience, The Magician’s Elephant is an animated film without much originality and spunk, the animation doing little to stand out in a crowded field of superior entries.

Based on the best-selling children’s book, the film follow’s Peter (Noah Jupe) as he searches for his sister, told my a fortune teller to follow a mysterious elephant after freeing it from captivity by completing three seemingly impossible tasks. Perhaps the biggest problem with The Magician’s Elephant is its one note energy; there isn’t much excitement, intrigue, or magic to be found. Thought there is a focus on the importance of hope and family, these themes are injected in scattershot fashion and without much cohesiveness. By the time the ending comes around, I felt as though I had wasted time on an underdeveloped, visually displeasing first draft of a film.

That’s not to say that there aren’t charming moments for viewers to grab on to. The talented voice cast of Jupe, Mandy Patinkin, Brian Tyree Henry, and more give it their all, but the story fails to translate from the page in a way that justifies anything to get jazzed about. I’m not completely sure why this didn’t work, but a strong candidate for the film’s failure rests in the gloomy setting and the injection of dull colors into the animation. Even the parts that should have been enthralling were drab and solemn. Overall, this is a major miss from the Oscar-nominated studio behind The Sea Beast.

The Magician’s Elephant is now streaming on Netflix.

Rating: 1/5