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Happily N'ever After (Widescreen Edition)
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Product Details
| Actors: | Sigourney Weaver, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Warburton, George Carlin, John Di Maggio |
| Format: | AC-3, Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC |
| Director: | Paul Bolger |
| Release Date: | 2007-05-01 |
| Aspect Ratio: | 1.78:1 |
| Audience Rating: | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) |
| Category: | DVD |
| Number of Items: | 1 |
| Label/Manufacturer: | Lions Gate |
| UPC: | 031398211839 |
Product Description
With the success of Shrek, more irreverent animated fairy tales (like Hoodwinked) were inevitable. Unfortunately, the original blockbuster set the bar so high--for characterization, humor, and heart--that other such 'toons are sure to seem redundant. Neither as clever nor as intricately rendered as the tale of the great green ogre, Happily N'Ever After is no exception. That said, small children may find it easier to follow, i.e. no Matrix references. As with the live-action Ella Enchanted, the CGI-animated story revolves around a downtrodden lass named Ella (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Her full name, naturally, is Cinderella. The man of her dreams is pea-brained Prince Humperdink (Patrick Warburton). Little does she know that royal dishwasher Rick (Freddie Prinze Jr., Gellar's real-life husband) has his eye on her. When the Wizard (George Carlin) goes off on a golfing vacation, he leaves bumbling assistants Munk (Wallace Shawn) and Mambo (Andy Dick) in charge. In no time at all, they get into a scuffle, and Ella's evil stepmother, Frieda (Sigourney Weaver), swoops in to take control of Fairy Tale Land. Her first order of business: Let the bad guys win. Consequently, Sleeping Beauty continues to doze, the Seven Dwarves wind up in jail, etc. Ella joins forces with Rick to set things right. Along the way, she realizes that the lowly lad has more princely qualities than the actual prince, and Frieda's reign turns out to be shorter than intended. It's not a bad idea, but the movie drags and the tunes are unmemorable. --Kathleen C. FennessyProduct Features
Customer Reviews
Rated
on 2010-03-03i wasn't exactly impressed with this
animated film,although the idea was interesting.however,it falls apart
somewhere in the execution.i came dangerously close to being
bored.there were only three reasons i didn't fall asleep.the voice
talents of Andy Dick as Mambo,Wallace Shawn as Munk,and especially
Sigourney Weaver as the Evil Stepmother.there were a few amusing
moments with Mambo and Munk,and Weaver was perfectly cast.otherwise,the
movie was pretty tedious.for me,Happily N'Ever After is a 2/5
Rated
on 2010-01-26I would have to say this is one of the favorite movies. It really is awesome.
Rated
on 2009-08-21Happily Never After / B000O58ZHQ
*Spoilers*
I kind of get the impression that "Happily Never After" was born after some marketing executives decided that the colossal success of Shrek stemmed mostly out of a 'mixed up fairy tales' plotline with constant references to known childhood tales, because that's what the movie feels like: a cheap, stripped-down version of "Shrek" with all the cleverness, emotion, and wit accidentally left out in the rush to video.
Perhaps I'm being unfair - I also get the impression that "Happily Never After" is a movie made for children, not adults, and thus I am not the target audience. And I'll admit that if you're just looking for something mindless and colorful to plop the kids in front of for the evening, you could pick a lot worse than "Happily Never After". But they'll get no points for originality from me - there's nothing here that hasn't already been done before, and better.
You'd really think that a 'mixed up fairy tale' type of movie could feature a strong heroine, and indeed "Shrek" certainly fit that bill, but I guess the makers of "Happily Never After" felt they weren't being classically "Disney" enough and decided to import the values of the 50's and 60's into their foray. The character of 'Ella' is painfully weak and insipid, and while the movie COULD have made the point that it's better to make your own destiny rather than wait around for fate to hand you some glass slippers and a ticket to the ball, as Rogers and Hammerstein did so well in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, they perplexingly choose not to. While Ella does get a couple of good kicks in against the baddies, the majority of her role is to slouch about waiting for someone to come marry her. Oh, sure, the movie swaps Prince Charming for the sweet and deserving servant boy, but in the end, Ella is still defined by her marriage to a "prince charming", just with the criteria for what constitutes the perfect husband swapped around.
A word should be said about the voice acting, and that word is, "HUH?". What happened here? I don't expect miracles from Geller or Prinze Jr., but Weaver is an incredible actress and yet all her lines sound painfully phoned-in. Rather than believe that she's somehow losing her touch, however, I choose to think that she shared my disdain for the plot and chose to convey her feelings via intentionally crummy voice-acting. Having now gotten all that out of my system, I have to note that the re-characterization of the seven dwarves as militia-style survivalists was one of the most amusing things I've seen in a children's movie lately, and was definitely the high point of the movie for me.
As I said before, "Happily Never After" is a movie that most young children will enjoy, and most parents will find tedious and stale. If you can get past the lackluster character of Ella, this isn't a terrible movie to pop in for the kids. But, really, I'd rather just show them "Shrek" a second time. Or, better yet, The Spiderwick Chronicles, where girls not only get to help with the action, they wield genuine swords.
Rated
on 2009-05-26My grandkids enjoyed this updated version of the fairy tale. The characters were exaggerated but funny. I liked how they included so many other fairy tale characters into the story. Really cute movie.
Rated
on 2009-04-21A pleasant animated film, Happily N'ever After, is another take on the classic Cinderella story though there are quite few surprises in this version.
The movie is indeed inspired and influenced by the Shrek series and Hoodwinked, nevertheless, it does not match the quality of the aforementioned films.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Sigourney Weaver and the rest of the cast do a good job in their respective roles, though the plot, the dialogues, the humor, and the music could have been worked on a lot more.
In short, Happily N'ever After is a film worth watching as it will provide for an evening's entertainment, however, for those with a soft spot for animated films, the Shrek and Ice Age movies, Antz, The Ant Bully, Bee Movie, Cars, Flushed Away, Hoodwinked, Madagascar, Monsters Inc., Over the Hedge, and Ratatouille, are definitely your must-see films. 3.5 Stars
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