Review: Academy of Magic

10 May, 2025 James Snyder 0 Comments 1 category

Title: Academy of Magic
Director: Jorgen Klubien
Starring: Laura Megan Stahl, Jamieson Price, Ben Diskin
MPA Rating: Not Yet Rated
Runtime: 1 hr 30 mins

What It Is: Aura is gifted with magical abilities; she and her friends have many exciting adventures at the academy, but soon Aura learns that the school hatches many dark secrets that she must uncover. Will she be able to unveil the truth?

What We Think: Let’s get one thing clear first. This is a film that will absolutely allure young children if you show it to them. It has the same dimensions as one of those three hour “baby shark” animation videos on YouTube, though thankfully there is a coherent story to follow. Overall, I would definitely recommend it to very young audiences under the ages of 6, as the characters have enough surface dimension to be liked and the “wondrous” nature of the story makes it just barely digestible. There is fun to be found within the film in that case. Is it something that can be enjoyed for all ages? Certainly not.

The story borrows so many elements from previous fantasy films about magic/wizards that it saturates the capacity to take anything seriously (which is why it’s perfect for the aforementioned age group). I also understand that it takes a bloody village to create an animated film (albeit Flow has proved to me otherwise) but as I watched the film, I realized that there simply wasn’t enough time (or passion) put into the making of it. The voice actors are good, but the animation sometimes gets to be unwatchable to the point where it felt like I was watching previsualization for a yet to be fully rendered group of animated frames. It would be one thing if it was a bit more stylized, but when the animation tries to be something it’s not, one can tell – and about a half an hour in, I knew it would be an uphill battle. That is the defining factor, along with the very barebones story, that makes it nearly insufferable for those in the audience who are older.

What We Think: D+; While this can be a good, easy-to-follow flick to throw on for a younger sibling, for those 8+, be prepared for a good chunk of time to be spent most dully watching poorly animated characters reenact clichéd scenes in a fantasy film that leaves much to be desired.