THE SLEEPING PRINCESS (1939)
Article 5141 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-27-2016
Directed by Burt Gillett
Featuring the voices of Sara Berner and Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Animated cartoon

When the Fairy of Destiny is not invited to the christening of a new princess, she places a curse on the child that she will fall asleep for a hundred years when she reaches her sixteenth birthday.

In case you haven’t figured it out, this is a cartoon parody of the Sleeping Beauty story. As such, it’s a passable though uninspired take on the subject. It gets most of its comedic content from the antics of the aged fairies and from the reluctance of both the princess and the prince in performing the duties assigned them in the stories; the princess doesn’t want to touch the spinning wheel and the prince is too shy to kiss the princess. Personally, when it comes to comic takes on fairy tales, I prefer the way Jay Ward and friends would turn them on their ears in “Fractured Fairy Tales”; in comparison, cartoons like this seem pretty timid.