Happily N'ever After (Widescreen Edition)

This animated feature is pretty good, but does lack the spark of some of the best animated features that have come out in recent years. The story works better for adults in my opinion as I think some of the jokes will go right over younger viewer's heads. The animation is decent and because I watched this on a HD cable channel, it made it look even better. The colors are vivid and reminded me of a fantasy video game. It's not the best animated film I've seen, but it's certainly not the worst. I rate it just below 3 stars.....2 3/4 stars!

Fractured fairy tales are clever & fun. Turning the Disney ideal on it's head every once in a while is not just refreshing, but a respite from the contrived and formulaic themes that our kids, and more importantly, us parents, are subjected to so frequently.

Unfortunately, this movie just doesn't deliver in terms of entertainment. Despite the star power enlisted for the voices, the writing for this movie just couldn't hold up to the promise of the DVD cover. The jokes were lame, the dialogue boring, and the characters just unlikable. As an admittedly "easily-amused" moviegoer, I found myself distracted several times. My (at the time) 6 year old was equally unimpressed, repeatedly asking when it was going to be over.

This is the kind of DVD that you can have playing in the background when a bunch of kids come over for a party. Family friendly, generally harmless, but falling far short of entertainment. Fairy tales, fractured or otherwise should keep a child's interest while delivering some allegorical life lesson - a moral, if you will. This movie fails on both accounts.

The earnest Freddie Prinze, JR, interrupts the film's introduction to let us know that this would no more be an ordinary fairy tale than Dennis Miller in the broadcast both would make for an ordinary broadcast team. A few credits later we meet the most interesting voice in the film, George Carlin as The Wizard. His hour of recording time used up, he exits the screen after five minutes and we are left with his assistants Mambo and Munk to carry the narration, exposition and comedy. If you are five, Andy Dick and Wallace Shawn as the funniest things in a movie might be a good thing, pushing forty... not so much. As a dog/cat whatsitsupposedtobe and a small yellow hippopotamus the two try to add an over the top edge to generic cartoon characters reading lines that sound as if they were written by a five year old rather than for a five year old.
The two show us the balance of nice and naughty that must be maintained for fairy tales to turn out right and the plot smiles and waves at us. Sure enough Cinderella's villainous stepmother overhears the two and soon the scale is set to naughty.
The rest of the story revolves around Sarah Michelle Gellar stretching her acting abilities to a full monotone as she falls in love with a non-prince, but not a non-Prinze, Jr, and the magician's sidekicks trying to restore order to fairytale land while regurgitating punch lines to jokes that somehow never got setup. To be fair Sigourney Weaver fills out the role of the evil stepmother nicely and that is no mean feat given that she is drawn with a twelve inch waist and forty inch hips and bust. For any males over her waist size, her appearance may be the high point of the film.
In short, the animation is mediocre, the writers have gone back to working as short order cooks, the jokes ain't funny and the heroine is dull, but evil never looked better.

Sure it's already been said how many times the storyline and niche of this movie has graced other films. And yes, its true that originality on the idea has run pretty thin, even in the case of Shrek the Third, but honestly, I would still rather watch yet another tired fractured fairy tale movie than most of the drivel the animation studios (Disney especially included) have thrown at us over the years. While nowhere near as character driven as Shrek or breakneck speed and side splittingly hilariously delivered as Hoodwinked, Happily Never After does exhibit moments of its own charm (love that Rumplestilskin with the stolen baby)in subtle ways that do shine through, but I wouldn't opt to see a sequel should one appear. Overall, its the lack of cleverly orchestrated jokes that lead to interesting plot points that's missing, opting instead for a more anecdotal approach that pales in the smoke of it's counterparts' crystal balls. If you're having a dilemma that there just arent any more good modern computer animated movies to see this weekend, or you just cant stand to sit through a wretched Disney classic animation princess story one more time, Happily Never After might be just the thing to put (albeit a little) magic into your weekend family movie time.

Happily N'Ever After had a really boring, predictable storyline. The pace moved along really slowly, and it was clear what would happen at the end. The jokes were bland and overall weren't very good. The animation was okay, but not great as it probably could have been. I'm not a huge fan of Shrek, but I'd say you should watch that instead of this. For small children I suppose you could have them watch this, it's more mild than the Shrek series.