Directed by
Paul J. Bolger
(Yvette Kaplan)
Cast
George Carlin ………. The Wizard (voice)
John Di Maggio ………. Dwarf #1/Dwarf #2/Giant (voice)
Andy Dick ………. Mambo (voice)
Sarah Michelle Gellar ………. Ella (voice)
Lisa Kaplan ………. Fairy Godmother (voice)
Jill Talley ………. Stepsister #2/Witch #2/Baby’s Mother (voice)
Tom Kenny ………. Amigo #3/Dwarf #3/Messenger/Wolf #2 (voice)
Tress MacNeille ………. Witch #1 (voice)
Michael McShane ………. Rumplestiltskin (voice)
Rob Paulsen ………. Amigo #2 (voice)
Jon Polito ………. Wolf #1 (voice)
Freddie Prinze Jr. ………. Rick (voice)
Phil Proctor ………. Amigo #1 (voice)
Wallace Shawn ………. Munk (voice)
Kath Soucie ………. Stepsister #1/Baby/Red Riding Hood (voice)
Patrick Warburton ………. Prince Humperdink (voice)
Sigourney Weaver ………. Frieda (voice)
Running Time: 87 minutes
Rated PG
DVD Release date: May 1, 2007
Usually train wrecks are interesting to watch. This is not the case with Happily N’Ever After. Most aspects of this film fall just shy of mediocrity, leaving the viewer with an insipid, but not offensively bad package. That is to say, Happily N’Ever After lacks the intrigue of a Ed Wood/ Uwe Boll level of incompetence.
It’s hard to ask, “what went wrong?” without answering, “a bit of everything.” From the superfluous apostrophe in the title to the film’s propensity for poorly chosen pop music, from it’s inconsistent plotting to its lazy design, from its similarity to more successful properties to its reliance on throwaway jokes, the finger of shame can be pointed in many different directions here.
Visually, the film is off. The characters were initially designed as 2-d creatures, and are not at all compelling in the third dimension. It has the feel of playing a 3-d video game based on a traditionally animated cartoon. It evokes the uneasiness of seeing a CGI Homer Simpson or Spongebob. The lesson is: just because you can use computer animation, doesn’t mean you should.
Here’s the story in a nutshell. A wizard watches over all of fairytale land, whose citizens include the big bad wolves of Grimm, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack of Beanstalk fame, the Frog Prince and so on. Sometimes these characters are aware they are in a fairy tale, other times not so much. The fairy tales are interminably repeating except when they don’t. Many different fairy tales all exist in this land, each with their respective princes, yet Cinderella’s prince seems to be the only royal person living in the land’s one castle. The wizard decides that he needs a break from overseeing this poorly conceived land, so he puts his assistants in charge of the scale of good and evil, which is literally a scale.
Providing the mostly useless narration for the flick is Rick, who is the king’s servant and who looks somewhat like Keanu Reeves. Rick pines after Cinderella, which is usually truncated in this film to be “Ella”. Ella is a vapid ingenue resembling Audrey Hepburn sans charisma. Things go the normal fairy tale route until Frieda, the wicked step-mother, wanders into the wizard’s office and takes over without much difficulty. She does some generic, mostly unmotivated, “evil”, and it is up to Rick and Ella to save the day. Not to spoil things, but the ingenious method by which our villain is dispatched? A punch to the face. How did they come up with something so clever?
At any rate, the story never really works. The characters are never fully, if at all, developed or likeable. Jokes and situations are delivered exclusively via exposition as if this were a radio play. Written by Junior High students. Who are hungover.
The DVD
There are a bunch of extra features here, but nothing that could be of any interest to anyone, ever. Well, save perhaps Paul Bolger’s mom. Bolger delivers the DVD’s director’s commentary track with all the zest and zeal of a man describing that time he tried to make toast, but forgot to plug in the toaster. Only, here the stories aren’t as compelling as toasted bread.
Bolger also introduces the disc’s three Featurettes, which can be watched as a series of about 15 uninteresting mini-featurettes.
There are some Deleted Scenes and an Alternate Ending, but neither add anything to the picture.
Also included are five of those awful DVD games, like the ones Disney is eager to slap on all their discs.
All in all, there special features enough to fill up an infinite amount of time. At least, that is what it feels like while one is watching them.
