Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple

***Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple*** is a 2009 American-German CGI animated direct-to-video film and sequel to *Happily N'Ever After* released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 24th, 2009, which stars Helen Niedwick, Cam Clarke, Jim Sullivan, Kirk Thornton, Cindy Robinson, David Lodge, and Catherine Lavin. Mambo, Munk, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, the Fairy Godmother, and the Dwarves are the only characters to return from the first film.

None of the cast members and crew return for this film. Andy Dick is replaced by Jim Sullivan, Wallace Shawn is replaced by Kirk Thornton, and Michael McShane is replaced by David Lodge.

## Plot

Snow White's parents, Queen Grace and King Cole, are very kind to their citizens, as Queen Grace will go around helping any citizen in need. One day, Queen Grace suddenly falls ill and dies but before she does, she tells Snow White "The mirror only tells half the story. True beauty comes from helping others."

Since Queen Grace died when Snow White was young, she never taught Snow White how to help the citizens. Since then, Snow White has turned into a misguided teenager who only likes to hang out with her friends Goldilocks, Little Bo Peep, and Little Red Riding Hood instead of helping the citizens. A prime example is when Snow White and her friends decide to go to a joust party instead of visiting an orphanage. That day, her father strictly tells her to return before morning and wear the royal robe. Instead, she takes it off and leaves it in the limo. She meets and falls in love with a handsome man. He doesn't return the feeling because of Snow White's behavior towards “riff raff” and his respect for Queen Grace.

When Snow White returns, her father is upset because she did not wear the robe (he found out on the newspaper). Snow White weeps about him being unfair and runs to her room. Her father notices her misguided side and decides to find a wife like Queen Grace to show Snow White how to become a proper lady. His assistant goes to the Fairy Godmother for help, where she begins a marriage service.

Because of Mambo's mischief, the Scales of Good and Evil are tipped to extreme evil, causing Lady Vain to turn evil and Rumpelstiltskin to appear. Rumpelstiltskin (who seems to have become evil again due to the Scales) uses the Magic Mirror to turn Lady Vain's face into a replica of Queen Grace's face. She goes to the marriage service and King Cole accepts her, not knowing that Lady Vain is truly a horrible scheming witch who wants to rule the kingdom.

Snow White is a thorn in Lady Vain's side and she wants Snow White gone from the kingdom. Just then, an apple appears, due to the imbalance of the Scales. When given to Snow White, it will make her say the rudest things she had ever thought. Lady Vain has Rumpelstiltskin give Snow White a fake make-over. They give her the evil apple and with the Magic Mirror, Snow White says the rudest things she had ever thought to the whole town including King Cole. Snow White wakes up not remembering what had happened or what she had said and decides to visit the town.

Because of the rude things she had said, Snow White is forced to leave and runs to the forest. She enters a familiar house, eats, and falls asleep on seven small beds. When she wakes up, she finds the Seven Dwarfs completely enraged with her coming inside without permission. One notices her to be Queen Grace's daughter, although her personality is not like her mother's. They convince Snow White to stay and plan to change her attitude to be just like her mother's. Snow White agrees to do whatever the Dwarfs tell her to do without questioning them or whining back. They go to help rebuilt the Three Little Pigs' homes after being blown by the Big Bad Wolf. She also helps the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe to turn into the most beautiful woman ever. And she helps babysit her children. Meanwhile, Lady Vain's wedding day is drawing closer.

During baby-sitting, Snow White sings to her children the same "Hush, Little Baby" lullaby her mother used to sing to her when she was young and realizes that helping others makes her and them feel good. With that, she starts her own Snow White's Help Center.

Meanwhile, at the kingdom, everyone is excited to meet Lady Vain, whose wedding with King Cole will begin at midnight. She hires two bodyguards because she is "not used to being among the people" Sir Peter, one of the bodyguards, finds out about Lady Vain's plan of getting rid of Snow White forever and runs to the woods to find her. He finds her reducing Pinocchio's nose and rebuilding Humpty Dumpty. At first, Snow White does not want to go, but she soon agrees.

They make it just in time, thanks to the help of Mambo and Munk, and enter the wedding. Without being noticed, Snow White goes in front of the altar and tells her father that if he wants to marry Lady Vain, it is his choice and not hers. Lady Vain, who is disgusted and doesn't want Snow White back, says that Snow White is still a horrible misguided teenager and has not changed at all. The citizens Snow White helped appear to save Snow White. Snow White even apologizes in front of everybody. Her father responds "I just want my daughter back" as the crowd awes.

Angry that everybody accepts Snow White's apology and ruined the wedding, Lady Vain uses the Magic Mirror to zap Snow White. But the attack is reflected back to the mirror, breaking the spell of Lady Vain's beauty, making her ugly again. Before the guards can take Lady Vain away, Snow White goes to her and tells her "You don't need the magic mirror to be beautiful." The Seven Dwarfs come to take her away instead. Snow White finally accepts the royal robe.

The film ends with Snow White, Peter, King Cole, and the townspeople dancing.

## Voice cast

* Helen Niedwick as Snow White
* Cam Clarke as Peter, King Cole, Humpty Dumpty (credited as Kelly Brewster)
* Jim Sullivan as Mambo, Magic Mirror
* Kirk Thornton as Munk, Pinocchio
* Cindy Robinson as Lady Vain
* David Lodge as Rumpelstiltskin, Priest
* Catherine Lavin as Queen Grace, Fairy Godmother
* Doug Stone as McHugh
* Doug Erholtz as McDowner, Pied Piper, Simple Simon
* Lex Lang as Grimm
* Kate Higgins as Goldilocks, Lucy
* G.K. Bowes as Little Red Riding Hood, Little Bo Peep
* Jennie Fahn as Old Woman in the Shoe

## Release

Vanguard Animation had no involvement with Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple. The film was instead produced by its secondary partners from Happily N'ever After, Berlin Animation Film. The film sold 222,042 units making $2,488,134 in revenue.

## Goofs/Errors

* This sequel basically worsened most of the problems from the original, but takes this up to extremes, due to the various problems as listed below.
* The Maya CGI animation is at its worst here, it looks worse than the original film, heck, it even looks worse than Hoodwinked! as it comes off as cheap looking and tacky as a choppy PC DVD-ROM, XBOX 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Wii U, and a Nintendo Switch video game, even for 2009 standards, which is awful and horrendous, considering that this movie took **two whole years** to produce and even released the same year as Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror. Depending on your view, the original film (while still looking low quality and choppy) has far better Maya CGI animation than this movie as it have a lot of effort put into the animation which is one of the main reasons why some people starting to only like and stick with the original, but on this film's side, the animation has little-to-no redeeming qualities for a lot of reasons.

* Many of the textures are less detailed to the point where it looks like they're been copied straight from a PlayStation 3 or XBOX 360 video game which even most PlayStation 3/XBOX 360 video games have way better-detailed textures and they came out years before this movie.
* The character models (especially the animal characters (in which; to quote Phantomstrider who said they look like they're came from a McDonalds' Happy Meal toybox), Rumpelstiltskin, Lady Vain's true form, and her mother) are even uglier and uncanny than the ones in the first film with awkward, creepy facial expressions and really stiff character movements, a perfect example for how weird-looking the character movements are when the townspeople were dancing at the wedding, their dancing movements look awkward due to the cheap animation, a female character **even twerked on screen**.
* The noticeable expressions as seen in the first film were a major downgrade compared to the original as the characters appeared to be soulless due to the creepy character models up to the point where the character models from the first film looked a lot better and less creepy than how they rendered in the sequel.
* During shots where the characters were far behind from the screen, the models of the characters were very graphically low quality which makes them feel like a poorly rendered video game cutscene.
* There are several times where the characters' parts (especially hair) clips through either other parts of the body or different objects (see the list of Animation errors shown below).
* The lip-syncing as well as the mouth movements are completely off at times and don't match what the characters are saying.
* Most of the visual effects also suffered from lightning issues which makes them look brighter that can effect the viewers' vision.
* The lightning is abysmal, and sometimes, the lighting is non-existent in scenes which makes the characters look nightmarish.

* The idea of a sequel was really pointless, as the original already has a good ending where Frieda and the fairy tale villains were defeated and Ella and Rick were married. Not to mention that the original didn't make enough money at the box office for a sequel, this is properly because Lionsgate and Berlin Animation Film wanted to continue the franchise by downgrading the quality that the original has, mostly the animation to make more money at the direct to video market as well as cashing in on Hoodwinked's low budget charm and success.
* Vanguard Animation and the crew from the first film (besides the film’s composer, Paul Buckley) weren’t involved in this production, instead, the production has to go with Kickstart Productions as a replacement for Vanguard, making this movie more like a reboot than an actual sequel.

* By comparison, Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back, another sequel of a film which is also from Vanguard Animation at least have the company creator and most of the crew members being involved.

* Bad and clichéd writing and story which is a generic "teenage family drama" only with some story elements copied straight from Snow White, the first three *Shrek films*, The Little Mermaid and its prequel, Ariel’s Beginning, Bratz: The Movie, *The Lion King* and its 1998 sequel, *Simba's Pride*. In fact, this movie was written by Chris Denk who would later write the first Alpha and Omega movie.

* Snow White is given a generic teenage story which is already done in better films.
* Over usage of clichés such as the "death of the main character’s parent as a child", "the villain redeemed out of nowhere after being defeated" and the generic "dance party" ending.

* While Mambo, Munk, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, the Fairy Godmother, the Big Bad Wolf, the Trolls, Sleeping Beauty, the Amigos, and the Dwarves return, most of the characters from the first film (especially the major characters) were either absent entirely without any explanation, reduced to cameos, being mentioned by some characters or just being retooled as if they never even exist in the sequel and were replaced by even more uninteresting, annoying and unlikable newer characters that are actually rehashes of the characters who appear in the original, there are some examples.

* The main protagonist from the first film, Ella is reduced to two cameos and a few mentions from other characters and is replaced by Snow White who was a stereotypical teenage girl who often cares about hanging out with her friends, is obsessed with her beautiful looks and disobeying her father into getting her own way after her mother died when she was young and later developed into a kind and caring girl just like her late mother. She is often coming off as a cheap version of Simba from The Lion King and Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
* Rick, one of the two love interests of Ella along with Humperdink in the first movie is reduced to two cameos and replaced by Peter who is basically a carbon copy of Rick from the first movie as both uses the same generic love interest to the main female protagonist trope as well as the same character model as Rick (with the differences being the hair and shirt with long white sleeves and green vest instead of brown) which clearly shows how lazy the animators really are.
* Frieda is replaced by Lady Vain who is basally a mean popular girl knockoff of Ursula/Vanessa from the Little Mermaid, Scar from the Lion King, Lord Farquaad from Shrek and Queen Beryl from Sailor Moon, this replacement is excusable since Frieda got sent to another dimension with Elephant Seals by Ella in the first film.
* The Wizard is nowhere to been seen nor mentioned in this sequel and is replaced by King Cole who is an unlikable clone of King Stefan from Sleeping Beauty who acts very overprotective towards his daughter and thinks that Lady Vain looks like his wife when he doesn’t even know her according to Snow White which is also excusable since the Wizard's voice actor, George Carlin, died in 2008, when they could've just hired another voice actor to replace him as the Wizard just like what Cars 2 did with Fillmore when Lloyd Sherr replaces Carlin as the new voice of him two years later).
* Prince Humperdink only gets a single mention under "Prince Charming" during Snow White's rude speech and is also replaced by Grimm which is possibly excusable since his voice actor, Patrick Warburton was busy with Space Chimps at the time.

* The absence of most of the old characters lead to many continuity errors that seemed to have contradicted the events of the first movie.

* In the first movie, Rick, Prince Humperdink, and the Wizard lived in the castle, but in this movie, however, Snow White, King Cole, Queen Grace, and Grimm all live in the same castle that the former three characters are living in the first movie, this movie also never even explains on how those four characters took these three characters' place as the owners of the castle though Rick and the Wizard's reasons why they moved out of the castle were excusable since Rick was married to Ella and lived in a house that the Fairy Godmother builds for them in the deleted scene of the first film and the Wizard possibly died before the events of the sequel giving his role to Munk and Mambo as the rulers of the kingdom like in the first movie.
* At the end of the first film, the villains are forced to move out of the kingdom, but a few villains like the Big Bad Wolf appeared at the opening night of the Jazz house meaning that they possibly came back to change their ways.
* In this movie, the Dwarves know Queen Grace when she was still alive though she’s never even seen with the Dwarves in the first movie.
* During the finding a wife for King Cole montage, Sleeping Beauty was seen being part of the wife choosing tryout even though she already has a prince as her love interest in the first movie.
* In one of the autographs, the stepsisters from the first movie appeared to have dates with the trolls despite them not knowing and were scared of the trolls.
* During the climax, Munk, and Mambo were sent to the scales area which is next to the wedding when it’s actually upstairs in the first film.

* Speaking of the returning characters, a few of them (except the seven Dwarves and Munk who were heavily improved) were flanderized beyond belief, making them acted very differently how they are from the first movie.

* Mambo went from an annoying, yet helpful troublemaking cat who wanted to make stories a bit different to more annoying than the first film and he and Munk are completely useless in the sequel who are only used for filler, unlike the original film where both of them were helpful to the plot by siding with Ella and Rick to stop Frieda from taking over the kingdom.
	+ He's also at his worst in the sequel as he broke the story scales, trying to fix the glitch while Munk is asleep and was responsible for the story to get worst after Snow White decided to go late-night dancing with the Damsels when she's supposed to come back to the castle before the rooster crows.
* Rumpelstiltskin is turned back into a secondary villain after he redeemed himself at the end of the first film who only cares about his beautiful wig and Lady Vain's appearance than anything else (including the baby from the first movie), also his new voice actor (David Lodge) made him sound nothing like his other voice actor (Michael McShane) from the first film.
* Little Red Riding Hood went from a cute little girl who was badly hurt by a wolf disguising as her granny to a stereotypical sazzy teenager who barely looks nor sound anything like she did from the first film, she also makes fun of Sir Peter (who is in his knight armor) by saying an unfunny Shrek reference.
* The Fairy Godmother is dumped down from being a dimwitted fairy who forgot Cinderella's name and turning her into a pumpkin in the first film, to being an owner of a marriage service that forces people to sign a long-form in order of getting a wife/husband.

* **Low production values:** Some characters have their models (including those from the first movie) being lazily recycled for some newer characters only with their designs and colors being alternated, for example, Lady Vain reuses Queen Grace's model for her beautiful form, the children from There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe all reuse the same models, making them more as clones expect with the shirt colors, Grimm reuses Prince Humperdink's servant's model expect with the hat, beard, long pants, shoes, and different colors, the three men (the butcher, the candlestick maker and the chef) reused all three models of the Amigos, and and Peter refuses Rick’s model from the first movie, but with different hair and long white sleeved shirt and the colors (as mentioned earlier).

* The dance party ending also suffered from this as there were background characters with the same models, yet the animators don't even bothered to change the designs or colors just like what they did with some of the models.
* Some characters have also given stolen character designs from other media such as Snow White who has the same model and colors as Disney's version of Snow White but wears modern teenage clothes, King Cole who looks a lot like King Stefan from Sleepy Beauty wearing a Burger King crown and Miss Muffet who looks like a Strawberry Shortcake reject.
* Little Red Riding Hood has her race changed from American to Mexican as opposed to her appearance in the original film for an unexplained reason which comes off as blackwashing.

* Insulting and offensive comedy which insults other Fairy Tales and various media (such as the "Shrek" joke and the infamous "It's called too much gingerbread, honey" line).
* The timing of this movie seems extremely off, as they try to make comedy by using poorly-timed sound effects in certain scenes.
* Almost none of the voice actors from the original reprise their roles in this sequel and only has voice actors from English anime dubs like *Bleach* and *Naruto Shippuden*, making the returning characters sound nothing like their other voice actors (especially Munk, Rumpelstiltskin and Little Red Riding Hood whose new voice actors barley sound anything like Wallace Shawn, Michael McShane and Kath Soucie). It's either because all of the voice actors from the first film didn't want to return for the sequel after how the first film turned out or they were too expensive to bring back mainly for its low budget.
* Terrible voice acting and dialogue, even from veteran voice actors such as Cam Clarke, Kirk Thornton, Cindy Robinson, Lex Lang, David Lodge, and Kate Higgins. An example is where the characters overuse the word, "Holla" many times to the point where it comes off as annoying for some people.
* Very poor grasp of the original film since it has almost no connection to the original movie, making it feel like more of a stand-alone sequel.
* Forgettable soundtrack which features dated teen pop songs from the 2000s.
* Misleading Title: Despite being called Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple, the film barely has any connection to its prequel other than the returning characters and Ella and Rick being a couple.

* Even the subtitle is misleading since Snow White is barely seen or mentioned in the original film as she doesn't take another bite at the apple, even the @ symbol was only in the title just to pander 2000s internet people.

* Parts of the editing are really poor, to the point where one can easily tell that parts of the plot were changed at the last minute; for example, Snow White was being forced to clean Miss Muffet's attic by the Dwarves, but it fades to black before Snow White could even clean it and then cuts to the bride choosing man telling Lady Vain to pick a wedding dress for her wedding night.
* Random photos, including screenshots from the movie, appear in Snow White’s room, mainly due to the animation being outsourced from China.
* Huge amount of animation errors that are easily more noticeable than that of the original.

* When King Cole is offered a drink from Grimm, he picks it up, turns around, and puts it back down without even taking a sip, possibly due to not including a slipping sound from the king.
* When Snow White fell in the mud motor when she was chasing the kids and she fell in the mud, the body that is on the mud is clipping through the ground.
* During the scene where Goldilocks was talking to Peter, and when she went to Snow White, two women behind them moves way too early before the background moves and then the woman disappears too early in one frame.
* During Snow White's rude speech, it suffered from some errors, like Bo Peep's phone and the bow which she tied around the bottom of her hat disappeared after Bo Peep got mad at Snow White for saying "Too much gingerbread" to her, reused closeups of Snow White's face, and noticeable clippings like one of her eyes clipped through her eyelid.
* Snow White's feet when she got out of bed to look like if someone sawed feet from a corpse and then sewed them onto her.
* When Snow White went to her desk after she woke up, the bed that she slept in disappears in the mirror and much stuff at her desk like her phone, hairbrush, makeup products, and the apple core magically appears in other scenes of Snow White's desk.
* In one scene where Snow White and Peter were dancing together, the background was completely black like an animation test which eventually changed back to normal in the next shot.
* After the magic mirror was destroyed and when Lady Vain got changed back to her true form, her dress was changed from a wedding dress to her casual dress for no apparent reason.
* The same issue happens in another scene where Lady Vain received a royal robe, she's wearing her casual outfit, but when Mambo told King Cole not to marry her, she's in her wedding dress even though her wedding takes place when the cow jumps over the moon.
* The sign for the Fairy Godmother’s Dating Agency was written in Comic Sans as opposed to the fairytale style font shown in other signs such as the gym sign.
* In the first shot of Snow White's room, there’s a picture of a magazine cover featuring Snow White on her mirror, but the cover on the mirror was gone afterward.
* The man going upstairs at the jazz house magically appears in the background where the previous shot doesn’t have him.
* The scenes where the men and Dwarves' shovels are clipping through the hay and dirt when it’s supposed to be dug out.
* In scenes featuring crowds, the people behind a lot of characters often switched places between crowd scenes.
* When Peter leaves Snow White and Goldilocks, he was walking behind Miss Muffet, but the next shot showed him going near her to dance with him.
* During the beginning scene, the page of the fairy tale book showed a picture of Cinderella and Rick, but when Munk was about to tell the Snow White story, the page was changed to a picture of the entire kingdom without even turning a single page.
* The giant glass ball with scales was behind Munk, but they were next to the stairs when Mambo goes downstairs though it did go back to behind Munk in the next scene.
* The girl's plush bear was changed to a plush bunny due to its ears being changed in two scenes.

* The movie can be mean-spirited at times such as Snow White saying very mean things to the entire town including her damsels, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, and Little Bo Peep.
* **Major plotholes:** Why some of the townspeople were nice to Snow White two to three days after they're mad at her for saying mean things at them which caused her to run away, also if Cinderella and Prince Charming were mentioned during Snow White's rude speech, then why didn't they appear in town after that?

* How did Munk and Mambo land in the scales area after Lady Vain defeated them at the wedding when it’s just upstairs from the ballroom to the scales controlling area in the first movie.

* Unnecessary use of **anachronism** despite the film set in a kingdom of fairy tales and nursery rhymes such as Snow White and her damsels having 2000s Samsung cell flip phones with a floating glass ball as video chat, Grimm showing the Fairy Godmother his Royal Assistant business card with his name on it, people taking autographs of the Damsels while on the red carpet, King Cole showing Snow White the newspaper that says "Snow White Cuts Line" and Rumpelstiltskin wearing his Elvis Parsley wig while giving Snow White a fake makeover.
* Uninteresting chain of events such as the Munk and Mambo scenes, that only serve to pad out the running time of the movie.

* It's somewhat 12 minutes shorter than the original since the sequel was 75 minutes while the original was 87 minutes.

* It ultimately killed the Happily N'Ever After franchise because the negative reception of both films killed any chances of a third film.

## Trivia

* Some of the newer characters are likable such as Sir Peter (despite being a bootleg clone of Rick from the first movie), Grimm, and Queen Grace (who sadly died in the movie).

* At least Munk and Dwarves were more likable than they were in the first movie.

* It does have good morals such as "only the mirror tells half of the story" and "true beauty is by helping others".
* Paul Buckley returned from the first film to compose this film which is surprising since most of the crew members from the first film were replaced.

## Reception

Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple received worse reviews than its predecessor. At Common Sense Media it got 1 out of 5.