In the spirit of “It’s never too soon to start teaching the kids discernment and the difference between cut-rate and low-bit-rate CGI animation and the good stuff,” let’s dive into the latest “Swan Princess” incarnation.

“The Swan Princess: A Fairytale Begins” is no “beginning” at all, but a continuation of a well-received 1994 traditionally-animated film from Disney alumnus Richard Rich, who directed “The Black Cauldron” and “The Fox and the Hound” and found himself on the outside looking in when The Mouse redicovered how to make animated classics with “The Little Mermaid.”

This Sony Wonder production for Netflix has a few frames from the earliest version of the story, but is mostly of that under-animated plastic-looking CGI variety one sees in cheaper car commercials and flatter, duller-looking TV and streaming shows. Remember the old direct-to-video Barbie under-animations of the early 2000s? It looks like those.

The film is about assorted transfers of power in the kingdom where all this is set, with the odd forgettably pleasant song, here and there, lecturing the peasants and the viewers on “What it takes to be a queen” and the virtues of “A story with another side.”

A new queen, 40ish Uberta (Catherine Lavin) is plucked from the masses of peasants related to royalty and crowned. Her working class husband Maximillian (Jesse LaPierre) sets out to reform policies among the Council of Crowns kings and queens so that the poor have work and food and don’t become thieves.

Queen Uberta? She’s all wrapped up in her “cause,” dueling a rival for best dog lover. Uberta takes in strays and tries to turn mutts into dog show winners, because she’s down to Earth like the common folk.

Generations join the family, rivalries rise and fall, talking critters show up and all of it is framed within a story “30 years” after all this begins, when the famous singer Madame LaCroix sings her final concert.

Frame by frame, it’s uglier to look at than most any recent feature-length animated bauble to cross most kids’ field of view — cheap and TV-friendly were the guiding principles here.

The voice cast is made up of unknown but competent professional voice actors — and screenwriter Brian Nissen.

The best one can say about this would be “It’s harmless enough.” But there’s a dated, patriarchal take on the queen, who has the power but who has little “causes” while the husband-king is the one fighting injustice, homelessness and the class war being waged by the rich against the not rich.

The songs vanish into thin memory, the animation drab and the story a patchwork pile of nothing. This “Swan Princess” is animated babysitting for tiny tots, nothing more. And even they will someday look back on what they watched as a pre-schooler and roll their eyes.

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Catherine Lavin, Jesse LaPierre, Yuri Lowenthal, Nina Herzog, many others

Credits: Directed by Richard Rich, scripted by Brian Nissen. A Sony Wonder release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:29