My wife made some direct comparisons of ‘Bridgerton’ and this show with how little they cared about how race in the originally all white roles. Turns out that it doesn’t really matter at all if they’re black, white, or asian, and it was a fun story from beginning to end. It was nice to see Whoopie in the midst of the high of her movie / television carrier, and Whitney Houston as the fairy god mother was a brave choice that worked for the most part. Jason Alexander as the royal assistant / best friend of the Prince was weird, as I never really thought of him as a physical comedian, but that’s what this role called for and that’s what he gave. On the list of things they swung for that didn’t work for me though is the accents that came and went depending on the scene and I could never really nail down what they were shooting for, either British or middle ages European perhaps?
If I remember correctly, this was originally made for tv, which explains the ‘standard definition’ and 4:3 screen ratio, but i’m happy to hear that the audio track appears to be a 5.1 pleasure to listen to. If you haven’t seen this version of the story before, give it a spin, it’s currently on Disney+.
