When I first heard about Disenchantment, my gut reaction was to elicit a by now all-too-familiar groan of exasperation. A comedy series that makes fun of the ridiculous nature of the fantasy genre, as well as the 'un-feminist' nature of the fairytale princess by positioning its female lead as feisty and rebellious? Wow, how original! It's not as if Disney has been beating that long-dead horse for the past five years with films like Frozen and Moana, not to mention films like Shrek, Enchanted, and The Princess Bride that all affectionately parodied these tropes years beforehand! And let's not forget Bender's Game, a Futurama special that did exactly the same thing as the latter batch of these films! But, setting my complaints aside, I presumed that maybe there could be something of worth within this series. After all, Groening and his creative team have always been known for tackling creative conventions with a mixture of biting wit and genuine affection for them; maybe Disenchantment could capture some of this magic again while also bringing something new to the table?
Yeah, no.
Set in the magical realm of Dreamland, the series follows Bean, a rebellious, alcoholic princess who gets up to all kinds of wacky adventures with her personal demon Luci and her elf friend creatively named Elfo, all to overturn the rigid gender roles assigned to women in most fantasy stories and offer a fresh take on the genre...at least, that's what we were promised by Groening and Netflix during the run-up to this original serialised comedy's premiere.
What we get instead is none of these things. It is a poorly executed, utterly unappealing mess of a show, one that spends most of its time either forcing its characters to wander around aimlessly while forgetting that one of its main selling points was the interconnected nature of its episodes or making painfully unfunny jokes that were far more entertaining the first time they appeared in Futurama (or, failing that, simply don't bother at all to properly set up the punchline). In a word, this show is lazy, an attitude that is noticeable in every single aspect of its production.
For example, over the course of ten episodes, none of the characters evolve beyond the shallow stereotypes they are meant to be parodying in the first place, especially in Bean's case. Instead of rebelling for any good reason, possibly against the strict gender roles enforced by the era she lives in, for example, she merely does so because being a princess is so hard you guys, another concept that has been flogged to death by Disney long before even The Simpsons existed. In the case of Elfo, his character undergoes a 180 degree turnaround not five minutes after he is introduced to us, another example of the creative team's utter carelessness with regards to character. When we first meet Elfo, he comes across as a rather raunchy and cynical character, rejecting his life of sugar-coated happiness and instead choosing to seek out more visceral experiences elsewhere, but once he enters the 'real' world, he instantly turns into an adorkable idiot á la Fry from Futurama, wandering around a battlefield with an oblivious smile on his face. Even Luci is a mere rehash of Bender, carrying himself with the same amoral irreverence so typical of the loud-mouthed robot. As such, when their lives are put in danger and I'm asked to care about them, I feel absolutely no investment whatsoever, a response that is not helped by the fact that nothing in the show has any lasting consequences up until the last three episodes. This is just another example of the creative team's complete lack of effort; when events that you think would have world-changing consequences have absolutely no impact on the next episode despite the promises of the show's creator that the series is serialised, such as when Bean turns one of her suitors into a pig or when she releases a swarm of demons upon the realm, how can one remain invested in the world
and its characters to actually want to keep watching it? Problems like these, when combined with the lack of consistent sound design (some scenes where the characters are running include their footsteps, others don't) and the unappealing art style, at least in my opinion, only seem to reinforce the idea that maybe the people behind this project just weren't really trying to create a good show, or even a passable one, at all.
In short, while Disenchantment has the potential to be something truly empowering and unique, its slapdash construction and over-reliance on better material, as well as the very tropes it promised to lampoon, means that it falls utterly flat when watched alongside Groening's other cartoon series. My advice? Re-watch Futurama instead; after all, Disenchanted could easily be seen as a far inferior version of the same show, only now, it's medieval!