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Very best movie i ever watch

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The concept of fairy tales turned on their heads is absolutely nothing new. We saw it time and time again in the 70s and 80s, mostly on Saturday Morning cartoons (Rocky and Bullwinkle) or in children's books (Sesame street.) However, it was 2001's Shrek that brought that concept into mainstream movies as since its' release, we've seen lots of other "fractured fairy tale" films come out; some good (Hoodwinked) and others, not so much (Tortoise vs. Hare.)Vanguard Animation's offering in this genre is known as Happily N'Ever After where when the wizard who looks after all fairy tales and makes sure they go by the book leaves on vacation, all the fairy tale villains, led by Cinderella's conniving and power-hungry stepmother, here called Freida seize control. Now it's up to Cinderella, or as her friends know her, Ella and her friend Rick, the palace dishwasher to save the day. This is one of those films that while it has some things working for it, many of the choices the filmmakers made work against it. What works for it is the animation, which is very nice and colourful and looks like something you'd see on a stained-glass window or tapestry, as well as the voice acting, especially Sigourney Weaver as Freida and Patrick Warburton as the not-so-charming Prince.What works against it is, sadly, everything else. There are plot numerous plot holes throughout, such as the fact that Ella has never been to the palace before the ball, yet somehow knows Rick, or the fact that after the stepsisters angrily leave the ball when the Prince decides to dance with Ella instead of them, they are never seen or mentioned again. The animation is also reused many times, with the fairy tale book that opens and closes the story always flipping past the same pages. Furthermore, almost all of the jokes were clearly put in just for the kids ("we had to call it something and Canada was already taken", "Monk is a bossy know-it-all with a butt the size of a shopping mall.") If those above problems were fixed, we would've had something just as good as Shrek. You could say that this film is my guilty pleasure. You probably won't want to see it again after watching it, but I've seen it more than once, the reason being that I like to look at what we got and dream of the great film that we could've had.

I watched this movie on DVD as I was convinced it would be like Shrek, a movie I liked a lot. Not only is this a 'wannabe Shrek movie', it's an awful animation by itself. The animation was stiff, the voice-acting was poor, the story and script were painfully bad, some really horrible jokes that were intended to be funny sent shivers down my spine (e.g. the end of the tale/tail -> we get it: NOT funny!), ...Cinderella, who is supposed to be a nice character is a real bimbo. You don't really care about her. The narrator is so cynical that there is more eye-rolling in the movie than real acting.We were absolutely fascinated with this movie afterwards and started looking up reviews. This is 'The Room' of the animation films. So DO watch it, just to see how an animation movie should NOT be.We were even more amazed to find out there were all these extra's on the DVD with even a testimony by Sigourney Weaver telling she was positively impressed with the script and chose to play the evil stepmother because it was 'such an original and round character' while it actually struck us how cliché and black-and-white this character was. I couldn't shake off the impression that she wasn't entirely honest because her eyes did not support what her mouth said in that interview. It really looked like she had played in the movie of her rich cousin, blinded by his delusions of his own talent, and was afraid to refuse the part or admit the movie just sucked because she didn't want to hurt his feelings. Other interviews in the extra's simply avoided the subject of the movie itself and were all about "creating animation in Europe is so cool", "we had so much fun in Berlin", "Berlin's a real party", "blablabla".We were thunderstruck so we immediately watched the sequel (the available clips) on YouTube and it was even worse than this one. The animation looked really awful there. I've seen storyboards that looked more like animation. We were sooo surprised! "Why on earth would they want to make a sequel on this movie?!" I think they just wanted to extend the party in Berlin. This time, the movie was about Snow White in puberty. So I decided to rate this movie 2 stars for the simple reason that the sequel is still worse and deserves no more than 1 star.

If you can compartmentalize your movie viewing, you will be able to negotiate through this.The thing to ignore is the thing we are supposed to place foremost, all the dialog, acting, story and pacing. Its just dreadful. Enough said about that.But. It has two things that interested me.One is simply the idea. It is a movie of a fairy tale inside a movie about manipulating fairy tales, inside a movie narrated by someone who seems to be outside both movies (he actually gets to stop the film physically) but at the same time trapped in the innermost movie. There's magic to explain some of this, but only a part. Its a very clever concoction. But the other thing was some of the characters. Well, they vary so; I guess I really mean the two women in front, Ella (Cinderella) and her redhaired stepmother. Its how they are rendered. Ella seems to be the only character whose face seems outside the cartoon world she inhabits. She's clearly a version of Audrey Hepburn with each of her attractive feature made a little more so. Its really quite good.The bodies are another thing. Not since Betty Boop's boobs were stilled by the censors, have we seen a young body as naturally sexy as this. There's nothing seductive or intended or cheap or erotic about it. Its just that all the parts move as they should, under modest clothes. I really was amazed, especially at the attention paid to her rear end.The step mother is something else. She moves with exaggerated erotic intent. She has huge bosoms and a nearly invisible waist. And then again huge thighs. Where the younger just walks, this puffy dominatrix swings. There's clearly some intent by the filmmaker here to get some sort of message across about the undesirability of overt sexuality. It zoomed right past me just in my astonishment at Ella's motion.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I thought this film was great! Yeah it is a bit of a rip off of Shrek but it's still it's own film too. It's over-done, the animation isn't crash hot, and the characters are very stereotypical (what do you expect?! it's a movie about fairy tales!) but there are also new things in it too (the dwarfs and their catapult). It's the same old story but still original if that makes sense. i watched it with my little sisters (3 and 8 yrs old) and we all laughed at different parts, because, like Shrek, it's funny for the whole family. I suppose it depends on your movie taste, as always. If you want a fun movie that is NOT meant to be taken seriously in almost all aspects of it and is sorta awesome for the whole family, choose this one, along with Shrek ;)