This is a confused and confusing adaptation, wherein stylish minimalism substitutes for story and meaningless special effects replace plot elements until the story is more or less completely gone.<br /><br />A key plot event, for example, entails utterly unexplained and un-anticipatable magical powers being deployed, where Andersen's original invokes more poignant and symbolically instructive natural cycles.<br /><br />The writers of this adaptation transform a story with powerful symbolic resonance into a bad Saturday morning cartoon.<br /><br />Instead of this I strongly recommend you seek out some version of the 1959 Lev Atmotov / Nikolai Fyodorov adaptation, which preserves the symbolic power of Andersen's material.