Happily N'Ever After

> *I give you Happily Never After!*
>
> **Frieda**

***Happily N'Ever After*** is a 2006 American-German CGI animated family comedy film directed by Paul J. Bolger, produced by John H. Williams, and written by Rob Moreland.

It is based on the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. The title is the opposite of a stock phrase, happily ever after; the name is contracted with an apostrophe between the N and the E. The film stars the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Andy Dick, Wallace Shawn, Patrick Warburton, George Carlin, and Sigourney Weaver. This film was one of Carlin's final works before he died. The film premiered in IMAX theaters overseas (Europe, Latin America, Australia, and Canada) on December 16th, 2006, and it was also theatrically released in the United States on January 5th, 2007, by Lionsgate, and it was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 1st, 2007, by Roadshow Entertainment. The film was panned by critics and audiences and was a box office disappointment, grossing $38 million worldwide on a production budget of $47 million.

A direct-to-video sequel, *Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple*, was released on March 24th, 2009.

## Plot

The story begins with the idea that the Wizard controls all of the fairy tales and maintains the balance of good and evil in Fairy Tale Land. With the help of his assistants the uptight Munk and the goofy Mambo, the Wizard is checking to make sure that all the fairy tales under his care are "on track" to have their traditional happy endings. As we meet him however, the Wizard is leaving for Scotland for a long-overdue vacation. He leaves the kingdom in the hands of Munk and Mambo.

Ella is a girl who is better known as Cinderella. She lives as a servant to her stepfamily and often dreams of the Prince who will sweep her off her feet. Her best friend at the palace is Rick, the prince's servant. Rick takes it upon himself to deliver the invitations to the royal ball to Ella. Ella sees Rick only as a friend, but Rick secretly loves Ella, although he is too cool and proud to admit it. Rick can't really understand what Ella likes about the Prince. Rick's Three Amigos, the comic chefs in the palace kitchen, believe that Rick has a bad case of "Prince envy". The Prince does everything by the book and plans to meet his maiden at the ball.

However, things don't go as planned at the ball. Thanks to the assistants, Ella's evil stepmother Frieda gains access to the Wizard's lair during the Prince's ball. She manages to chase off Munk and Mambo and tip the scales of good and evil, causing a series of fairy tales to go wrong and have unhappy endings, including Jack getting stepped on by the Giant yet surviving, Rumpelstiltskin winning his bet with the miller's daughter and taking her baby, and the unseen demise of Little Red Riding Hood. She summons an army of Trolls, evil witches, three Big Bad Wolves, the Giant, and Rumpelstiltskin to her castle. Ella finds out and escapes to the woods where she meets Munk and Mambo. The trio set out to find the prince who has goes looking for his maiden (not knowing it was actually Ella) in hopes that he will defeat Frieda and save the day.

Together, they flee to the Seven Dwarfs' home. Witches and trolls led by the Ice Queen attack them. The Seven Dwarfs hold off the trolls, while they flee with the help of Rick who had stolen a flying broom. Frieda decides to go after Ella herself. She succeeds in capturing her and returns to the palace, with Rick, Munk and Mambo in pursuit. Frieda tortures Ella because if the story had run its course she would have married the prince while Frieda would never get anywhere in life. Rick, Munk, and Mambo slip into the castle and attack Frieda. During the fight, Frieda generates a pit in the floor. Mambo knocks her in, but she uses her staff to fly back up again. After a short battle, in which Rick takes a blast meant for Ella and falls into a deep sleep, Frieda creates a portal by accident. Ella knocks Frieda back and punches her into the portal. Rick awakes from the spell and he and Ella kiss, finally admitting their feelings for each other.

Ella and her true love Rick decide to choose their destinies in a world of happy endings and get married. Rumpelstiltskin has shown that he has come to care for the baby and the miller's daughter lets him stay in the castle as the baby's nanny. The Wizard returns from vacation where he wasn't told about what happened while he was away.

In the mid-credits, Frieda is shown trapped in the Arctic surrounded by elephant seals.

## Cast

* Sarah Michelle Gellar as Ella, a beautiful girl and the scullery maid from the tale "Cinderella" and the protagonist of the film. She was formerly turned into a princess in a hot pink and light hot pink princess dress and falls in love with the Prince who puts a glass slipper on her foot, but later realized that her true love is her best friend Rick.

* Freddie Prinze, Jr. as Rick, a stressed-out servant who works for the prince and finds him as a grand annoyance. He dreams of marrying Ella, enchanted by her beauty but wonders what she sees in the prince at all.

* Andy Dick as Mambo, a rebellious and goofy amethyst purple cat-like creature who works for the Wizard. Bored with the cycle of good endings, he wishes for things to go differently every once in a while but relents when he sees how far out of control things went.

* Wallace Shawn as Munk, an uptight and smart tangerine pig-like creature who also works for the Wizard. Unlike Mambo, he avoids causing so much trouble in the fairy tales'. He helps Ella stop Frieda from taking over fairy tale land. Although he and Mambo bicker, they're best friends.

* Patrick Warburton as The Prince, the prince of the Cinderella story. Unlike the original prince, he is somewhat lazy and ignorant, but is determined to find his "maiden", Cinderella. He follows steps in a tiny booklet he carries around. The Prince's name is revealed to be Humperdink which is only mentioned in a deleted scene on the DVD release.

* George Carlin as the Wizard, an unnamed ancient wizard who watches over the fairy tales of Fairy Tale Land making sure they go by the book and balances the Scales of Good and Evil to make sure they go well. He leaves his assistants in charge while he goes on vacation in Scotland.

* Sigourney Weaver as Frieda, Cinderella's power-hungry stepmother and the main antagonist. She takes over Fairy Tale Land by rigging the Scales of Good and Evil and takes the Wizard's staff for more power.

* Michael McShane as Rumpelstiltskin, the titular character from the tale "Rumpelstiltskin". He takes the baby from the miller's daughter after Frieda tampers with the Scales of Good and Evil on the scales and assists her.

* John DiMaggio as the Giant, the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk.

* Tom Kenny, Rob Paulsen, and Philip Proctor as Three Amigos, cooks who are friends of Rick.

* John DiMaggio and Tom Kenny as dwarves and trolls.

* Kath Soucie and Jill Talley as stepsisters.

* Kath Soucie as Little Red Riding Hood.

* Tress MacNeille and Jill Talley as witches.

* Tom Kenny and Jon Polito as two out of the three Big Bad Wolves. The Fat Wolf that is voiced by Polito is based on the Big Bad Wolf from "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats", the Tough Wolf that is voiced by Kenny is based on the Big Bad Wolf from "Little Red Riding Hood", and the Crazy Wolf is the runt of the litter and doesn't speak.

* Lisa Kaplan as the fairy godmother

## Soundtrack

* Hammer's Coming Down - Brooke Lizotte

* Happy Doesn't Have to Have an Ending - They Might Be Giants

* Scotland the Brave - David "Bagpipes" Brooks

* Baby Wants a Diamond Ring - Squirrel Nut Zippers

* Pass the Glok - Kris Dirksen

* Monster Mash - Bobby Pickett (as Bobby (Boris) Pickett) and The Crypt-Kickers

* Disco Inferno - The Trammps

* Bar Sauce - Population Music

* Trainwreck - The Sammies

* No Hill Is Too Steep - Farmer Jason

* Get What I Want - Jaron Lowenstein, Skylar Grey (as Holly Brook), Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher

* Sneaking In - Population Music

* Happy Ending - Aidan Hawken

* No More Rain - Jack Diamond (Ending Theme)

## Release

The film premiered in IMAX theaters overseas (Europe, Latin America, Australia, and Canada) on December 16th, 2006, and it was also theatrically released in the United States on January 5th, 2007, by Lionsgate, and it was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 1st, 2007, by Roadshow Entertainment.

The film was originally aired in Germany on Ki.Ka and in France on TF1 as part of the TFOU programming block.

## Sequel

A direct-to-video sequel, *Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple*, was released on March 24th, 2009.

## Goofs/Errors

* Terrible writing and story which the film tries too hard to make it seem like a movie much more similar to the first two Shrek films and HoodWinked!, but it failed miserably due to the lack of charm that these three films had. In fact, it was written by Rod Moreland, the same writer who later wrote Space Chimps and its sequel as well as the much better Gnome Alone.

* Very cheap and choppy Maya CGI animation, which looks more like a PC CD-ROM, Original XBOX, PlayStation 2, and a Nintendo GameCube video game, even for 2006 standards, which is awful and horrendous before Care Bears: Oopsy Does It! came out, in the year of 2007 and has far better Maya CGI animation than this movie.

* Unfunny and forced comedy which insults other Fairy Tales and various media (such as the Runaway Bride and Happy Feet references).

* Uninteresting and unlikable characters that were seen to have an abomination to the additional characters from the much better films (like Mambo which is an abomination to Timon from the Lion King, Rumpelstiltskin, Freida and Prince Humperdink who is another generic strong, but dumb character voiced by Patrick Warburton).

* Some of the other characters are either huge idiots, butt monkeys or joke fodders who don’t even serve a purpose to the story as well and are only there just for filler such as the Amigos.

* Terrible voice acting and dialogue, even from veteran voice actors such as Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr, Patrick Warburton and other veteran voice actors.

* Questionable casting choices, such as Andy Dick as Mambo.

* Forgettable soundtrack which features dated pop songs from the mid-2000s.

* Some moments can be very disturbing such as Prince Humperdink falling off the batology after seeing Ella's true form, which is very inappropriate for a PG movie.

* Much of the 3D character models (expect some of them like Ella and Freida) were very ugly and uncanny with awkward but noticeable expressions and very fast character movements.

* The timing of this movie seems extremely off, as they try to make comedy by using poorly-timed sound effects in certain scenes.

* Uninteresting chain of events such as the Munk and Mambo scenes, that only serve to pad out the running time of the movie.

* The movie can be mean-spirited at times such as Freida forcing Ella to do chores while she and her stepsisters go to the ball.

* Scenes go on for so long and it’s not even funny (mainly the production company logos and credits being shown before the film lasts for two minutes) because it's too short.

* **Plot hole:** How did the Dwarves got captured by by the villains when their house was villain-proof?

## Trivia

* Ella, Rick, Munk, Little Red Riding Hood, the Dwarves and some others are much likable characters.

* The concept of Fairy tale stories being controlled by someone sounds like an interesting story, but unfortunately nothing much is done with it aside from the flaws that the film has.

* The Maya CGI animation (while being cheap and choppy) at least, it looks good to the European kids and it has some good qualities such as having a lot of effort and the notable expressions.

* Some of the character models like Ella, Rick and Freida's are very nice to look at.

* Some songs, while being dated from the mid-2000s, are at least, very nice to listen to.

## Reception

### Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 4% based on reviews from 80 critics. The site's critical consensus is: "Happily N'Ever After has none of the moxy, edge or postmodern wit of the other fairy-tales-gone-haywire CG movie it so blatantly rips off." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 28 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating “generally unfavorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “C" on an A+ to F scale.

### Box Office

The film opened #6 behind Dreamgirls, Freedom Writers, Children of Men, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Night at the Museum, which was at its third week at the #1 position. The film made $6,608,244 during its opening weekend. The film made a total of $15,589,393 at the US box office and $15,300,096 foreign, grossing a worldwide total of $30.1 million on a $47 million budget, making it a box-office failure. By August 2010, the movie has grossed $38.1 million worldwide. It made $16.7 million in DVD sales in the United States.

### Accolades

Ruth Lambert was nominated for Best Animated Voice-Over Feature Casting at the Artios Award for her work on this movie.