Happily N'ever After

For those who couldn’t get enough of SHREK, HAPPILY N’EVER AFTER supplies a similar take on fairy-tale traditions. Set in Fairy Tale Land, this comedy features the heroes and villains of stories from Rumplestiltskin to Sleeping Beauty. The job of the wizard (George Carlin) is to ensure everyone has happy endings. But when he leaves on vacation, he entrusts his tasks to his inept assistants. Cinderella’s evil stepmother (Sigourney Weaver) begins to wreak havoc on the endings of fairy tales. Though she’s interested in menace in general, she particularly wants her stepdaughter, Ella (Sarah Michelle Gellar), to suffer. She vows to keep her from Prince Charming (Patrick Warburton), much to the delight of his servant, Rick (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), who is in love with Ella himself. HAPPILY N’EVER AFTER takes aim at the stories everyone knows by heart. Here Prince Charming needs a guidebook to behave like royalty, with Warburton fashioning a delightfully doltish contrast to traditional romantic heroes. Character actor Jon Polito plays a big bad wolf who could have been an extra on GOODFELLAS. As the wicked stepmother, Weaver turns decades of experience playing strong women into portraying this archetypal baddie. With its celebrity voices, HAPPILY N’EVER AFTER is an amusing reversal of Disney’s fairy-tale films of the past.