• Directed by Ted Nicolaou
• Written by Ken Carter, Jr. and Frank Dietz
• Starring
  • Jaime Renee Smith
  • Kevin Wixted
  • Saxon Trainor
  • David Brooks
  • Godfrey James
• Produced by Kevin Hyman and Vlad Paunescu
• Executive produced by Charles Band

I’m not saying that either the original Magic in the Mirror (1996) or this sequel are great cinema, but the production of the sequel was well-handled logistically compared to some other features from the Full Moon family of labels. This second movie was obviously shot immediately upon the completion of the original, thus affording complete continuity in terms of cast and locations, which is not always guaranteed when low-budget movies sequelize (see Shadow of the Knight, aka DragonWorld: The Legend Continues (1998), or Killjoy 2 (2002) for examples of how this can go badly). At the same time, unlike some other Charles Band productions in which multiple installments were shot back-to-back (I’m thinking specifically of the notorious fourth and fifth installments of the Trancers series), the first movie was complete and self-contained, and the second doesn’t try to pad its running time by largely repeating the first movie as a recap.

Paper-wrapped chicken, I’ve heard of — but gauze-wrapped duck?

Some short length of time has passed since the events of Magic in the Mirror. Mary Margaret’s physicist mother Sylvia (Saxon Trainor) has dissolved her partnership with Dr. Tuttle (Cristian Motriuc, whose character is inexplicably listed as “Dr. Schmott” in the credits) over the events in the last movie. She has also been recognized with a prestigious award, while Dr. Schmott has been marginalized as a whacko. In celebration of the award, Sylvia and her husband (David Brooks) are throwing a costume party for their friends and colleagues. You know, just the kind of contrived social function at which, say, a couple of human-sized intelligent ducks could mingle without drawing undue attention. I’m just saying.

Meanwhile, Dr. Tuttle has been continuing his work on the Doppelganger, the huge interdimensional laser thingie which had once been his joint project with Sylvia. Thanks to his experiences at the climax of the last movie, he knows that mirrors are somehow gateways to a parallel dimension, and thus he’s put all his effort toward breaking through to that other world, all the while muttering about how he’s been slighted and how his immanent success will revenge him upon his persecutors. That, plus his habit of wearing bowties, cements his role as our designated Mad Scientist.

“She blinded me — with SCIENCE!!”

And meanwhile again, in the mirror universe, drake Queen Dragora (Eileen T’Kaye) has just removed the bandages from her last encounter with Mary Margaret, and is ruminating on how she can possibly exact her revenge on the people child with her two advisors, Swanson and Admiral Dabble (Cristian Motriuc in a second role, and Ion Haiduc - one of the few roles in which I have not instantly recognized him). To calm her, they have arranged for a Mirror-Minder to be kidnapped; Mirror-Minders aren’t quite human, but they’re close enough that they can be made into a serviceable tea if steeped for ten seconds in the huge duck-shaped teapot that dominates Dragora’s throne room. (Remember - boiling alive is wholesome family entertainment!) The drake soldiers who snatched the Mirror-Minder also grabbed his mirror, and while Dragora is admiring her unbandaged plumage in it, Dr. Tuttle turns on his Doppelganger on what turns out to be the exact counterpart to that mirror on our universe, and presto! A permanent passage between the universes!

(Every once in a while, I must stop and reflect upon what I have written, and ponder the many experiences in my life that have led me to compose such sentences as those which make up the preceding paragraph. Life, truly, is weird.)

Livin’ la vida Stargate!

With the drakes now united with the human enemy of Mary Margaret’s family, it’s time for things to… well, to spin in place for a while, really. I did mention a masquerade party, right? Well, when Tuttle drives the drakes over to the house and Dragora sends Swanson and Dabble in to reconnoiter, swishy caterer Bloom (Gerrit Graham) assumes them to be the two servers sent over by the temp agency to help his short-staffed kitchen. I would love to be able to tell you that hilarity ensues, but at best it’s mild amusement, restrained by the certain knowledge that the entire subplot is engineered mostly to take up running time at one of the main shooting locations.

It would be mismatched if Mary Margaret were alone in fending off the drakes, and of course her parents are no help, so also returning from the previous movie are Mirror Watcher Tansy (Kein Wixted) and Mirror Master Melilot (Godfrey James), called upon on their side of the mirror by Queen Hyssop (Saxon Trainor again) to find out how Dragora managed to get into the human world without mirror berries. You remember the mirror berries, right? They’re the magical contrivances which grow only on our side of the mirror which allow passage through to the mirror universe. Now, it just so happens that in the last movie, Dad accidentally dropped a handful of them down an air vent in the house. By happenstance, those berries fell through a hole in the ductwork into the basement, where they landed on an open bag of potting soil. That means there’s a small bush of mirror berries right at the bottom of the basement staircase, waiting to be discovered by Rudy (Bryan J. Terrill), the nosy son of a couple of scientist colleagues invited to the party. Rudy impulsively grabs a handful of the silver berries, then explores Mary Margaret’s bedroom where the huge mirror starts to shimmer…

Better than some of the stuff growing in my basement…

The movie would be more fun if we weren’t constantly aware of how little has to happen in order to keep the plot from running out long before the credits roll. Mary Margaret bickers endlessly with Bloom, the two drakes pressed into service as waiting staff commit a few low-key social gaffes, and in large part every character or party wanders through the party-filled house without running into each other (because if they all got into the same place, the movie would be over two minutes later). That’ll work once or twice, but when it become the mainspring of the plot, it gets tedious; I mean, I know that two university academics aren’t going to be able to afford that big a house.

And the payoff we’ve been waiting for for two movies now — the justification for Mom and Queen Hyssop being played by the same actress — is so underwhelming it’s not even funny. Yes, Mom is mistaken for Hyssop, what with her costume just happening to carry that same Victorian Greenhouse vibe that Hyssop effects. However, it lasts for all of forty seconds from across the room; Mom, never having seen the drakes before, doesn’t know that anything’s up in her house, and once she starts giving an incoherent speech on science and love, the drakes immediately declare, “That ain’t Hyssop!” The best guess I have is that the dual-role casting was a conscious nod to The Wizard of Oz (1939), without any intention to follow through and let such a nod have any impact on the present movie.

No, go ahead, read some gender-political subtext into this. I don’t mind.

I did like some of the technical aspects of the movie, if only because they show the ingenuity necessary on a tight budget. For instance, when a character looks through the mirror and sees his own reflection against the backdrop of the parallel world, they literally placed the actor against the backdrop of the parallel world, or rather shot the scene on the set for the parallel world, with the backdrop of the world in which the character’s supposed to be immediately behind the frame of the mirror. It’s a low-tech effect that requires nothing more than planning ahead, which is usually not one of the hallmarks of these quickie kidvids. But the rare low-key technical delight doesn’t really make this movie anything more than it is: A sometimes silly and definitely surreal concept realized cheaply.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 2
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • Saxon Trainor (Mom/Hysop) played “Lt. Linda Larson” in the TNG episode “The Nth Degree”
  • Gerrit Graham (Bloom) played the suicidal Q in the Voyager episode “Death Wish”