There was a time when you could sit through an animated feature with the knowledge that the characters wouldn’t burst into song. But not anymore. The scary truth is that the current trend for animated musicals is all too real, no thanks to that chilly 2013 release.

Jumping on the animated musical bandwagon is this latest offering from Skydance Animation, with their follow-up feature to 2022’s abominable Luck. Can they be luckier with their second effort?

In the kingdom of Lumbria lives Princess Ellian (Rachel Zegler). It should be a happy time for her as she’s just about to celebrate her fifteenth birthday, but the situation with her parents makes things difficult. You see they were turned into monsters a year ago, and the princess and her close staff have managed to keep it a secret from everyone for all this time, but it’s getting difficult more and more every day.

She decides that she’s going to do all she can to turn them back into humans once again, but the question is, how? She learns that the only way to do it is to go on a long and arduous journey, across treacherous lands, which will test the princess and her companions to the limits.

The good news is, is that Spellbound is a far better and enjoyable flick than its awful predecessor. It is vibrant and colourful, set in a magical kingdom full of surprises.

The bad news is, of course, that there are songs. That’s not to say they bad, they’re helmed by uber musician Alan Menken, who knows his way around an animated film score, having done so with such classics as 1989’s the Little Mermaid and 1991’s Beauty and the Beast. But it has to be said that they are, like so many of the songs from recent animated films, instantly forgettable, which obviously has its upside.

The story itself is functionally generic, with a princess, who along with a band of kookie characters, embarks on a quest. Unfortunately the deeper into you get you soon realise that it’s all an allegory for divorce, with Ellian’s parents literally becoming monsters from fighting with one another. Now some younger members of the audience may well benefit from the film’s message, but really, it just feels like it’s there to be seen to be doing some good, as opposed to being a sincere attempt to reach out to a young audience who may be struggling with parents at each other’s throats.

Perhaps there will be a new trend somewhere on the horizon, where animators who feel the need to make musicals will finally let it go, as it were, as well as stop feeling the need to be preachy, and return to simply producing captivating animated stories.