Movie Movie Podcast

Dunn returns to smash your face with his brain. Enjoy!

With Snow White and the Huntsman and Alice and Wonderland, Hollywood discovered that they can make lots of money by taking fairy tales shoehorning in the Hero’s Journey, and putting the princess in a suit of armor. Well, two can play at that game, without further ado, I present

The Princess and the Pea
By Andrew Dunn

Call To Adventure
A young woman named Rose (played by Sarah Hyland from Modern Family) lives with her parents in a small unassuming cottage in the woods. It is an enjoyable life but Rose feels there are better things in store for her. She has a fight with her parents and runs away into the woods. As it begins to get dark Rose sees fires burning and goes to explore. She hears yelling and there is strange movement and very large shadows moving about. Her father suddenly grabs her providing a jump scare. They are both so interested in what is going on that there is no time for punishment. Her father goes off ahead. We hear raised voices and the father sprints back grabbing rose. An arrow hits him in the back and he cannot go on. With his dying words he says that “they” had seen him and that it was not safe to go back to the cottage, instead she should make for the Palace. He explains that Rose always felt different because she is actually a princess and must beg the King and Queen to take her and, but dies before he can explain more.

Supernatural Aid
Rose wonders through the woods with only a vague sense of where the palace is. It starts to rain. Strangely the trees seem to guide her and in no time she is at the palace. A frightened, cold and hungry Rose pounds on the door to the palace. A kindly plump maid opens the door. Rose starts to pour her heart out and the maid ushers her inside where Rose is face to face with the Prince (played by Channing Tatum) and it is love at first sight.

Threshold Guardians
The Prince allows Rose to stay in the servants quarters. The next day we find out that the Prince is to be married off to one of the many suitors who have just arrived at the palace. The queen is very critical about each of the suitors, but the prince is only thinking of Rose. He brings Rose up to the queen who says that they don’t even know if she is really a princess, so she comes up with a plan to test it out. Now the actual stuff from the fairy tale happens, and Rose sleeps on a pile of mattresses (an exaggerated 3D trailer shot) with a pea at the bottom.

Helper/Mentor
Stuff gets weird when the pea (voiced by Billy Crystal) sprouts legs and arms and crawls up the mattresses and explains to Rose that she must say that she couldn’t sleep because something was hard in the bed, and that things aren’t all what they appear and she must be vigilant but he can’t say more.

Challenges and Temptations
It seems as though Rose has been accepted as royalty, and is to be wed to the Prince. In a drawn out 2nd act, Rose becomes complacent and doesn’t heed the pea’s warnings about the queen. It turns out that the queen is evil (naturally) and wants to rule the kingdom so never wanted the Prince to marry and be the rightful heir, so she poisons the king, captures the prince, and tries to kill Rose.

Abyss: Death and Rebirth
Rose is able to escape into the woods with the help of the pea who leads her to a clearing filled with tree creatures called the treelings (think Ents but shorter). We finally discover the pea is actually a child form of these creatures and that the queen has been taking the children from the creatures and using them as fuel (she is evil after all). Rose figures out that her and her father must have happened upon the queen’s forces who were doing just this.

Transformation
Because Hollywood thinks that a strong female character is simply a female who has stereotypical male attributes (such as being a warrior), Rose, wearing a suit of armor, convinces the treelings in a bombastic speech to overthrow the queen. Bonus Hollywood cliche of the passive ‘other’ peoples who need a white person to lead them out of their problems.

Attonment
In a huge battle scene that desperately wishes it was from the Lord of the Rings the tree creatures are able to take the palace and capture the queen.

Gift of the Goddess
The prince is now a king and he is able to bring an immediate between the treelings (even though they killed hundreds of people). He marries Rose in a lavish ceremony filled with both treelings and people. An old looking women treeling officiates, and they lived happily ever after… unless it makes enough money for a sequel.