The swan princess(the first one)was good but the second one ...Is so piteful,clavius is a complete freak, Derek begging for his life,odette has become a winy :where did she actually left her boldness?The story hasnt even a reason to exist, the draws are quite bad(the lip thing)the story is just ridiculous, predicable ,the vilains are so creeps that you can possibly been affraid of them?!I was actually begging that the movie end so dissapointed i was, werent everyone?So please dont watch that movie is you're a fan of the first.

I must admit to not being a huge fan of the original movie, but this sequel sure makes it look good. Frankly I'm surprised this even got a limited theatrical release. The animation is conspicuously cheaper, the voice cast are all gone except for Michelle Nicastro (Odette) and Steve Vinovich (Puffin), and the story is just tired and dreary.

Basically, an evil sorcerer (who comes out with great lines like "Today we take over the world!") is trying to capture the 'forbidden arts', which are a globe hidden somewhere in Derek and Odette's castle. After a series of distractions aimed at getting Derek out of the building, he captures D's mother... actually I'm not sure why he even does that, considing what a horrible nuisance she is. Furthermore I can't understand why Derek would want to get her back, but anyway he does, and somehow in the meantime nasty wizard steals the globe. A very contrived scene is introduced to turn Odette back into a swan for about the last 20 minutes of the movie.

Basically all of the magic and quality of the original film (to the extent that it had any) are gone, and you're left with a lame, predictable story, in which the characters have no depth, and the production is full of Richard Rich's trademark sloppiness, which has affected everything by him I've ever seen. Actually I wonder how he raises the money to get his films released. For a 1997 animated feature, this is pretty pitiful. I dread to think what the third, DTV one is like.

A couple of examples of the sloppiness I mentioned. Really bad lip-synch (or beak-synch), a scene where a character is supposed to move his eyes, but in fact it's the rest of his face that moves while his eyes stay still, a scene where a person sinking in a bog reaches out his hand, and it's absurdly out of perspective, like it was drawn by a 6 year-old.

There are also lots of pop-culture motifs and jargon which really don't work, and at their worst are just ridiculous - like the evil wizard playing an electric guitar solo. Ok, Genie could have got away with something like that in 'Aladdin', but here it just looks dumb.

I could be wrong, but I can't see anyone liking this movie much. Fans of the first one will surely be disappointed by its obvious inferiority, and anyone who didn't like the first one won't even be watching it, except, as in this case, for review purposes.

Narrowly avoids 1 star, and I swear I am not going to watch any more Richard Rich films. I know they're supposed to be wholesome, but somehow they always seem vaguely creepy to me, like there's going to be some 'Fun with the Bible' game in the special features.