Happily N'Ever After

Happily N'Ever After

Frieda: "I give you Happily, NEVER, After! Hahahahaha!"

Genre:	Family Action Comedy
Directed By:	Paul J. Bolger Yvette Kaplan
Written By/Screenplay:	Rob Moreland
Starring:	Sarah Michelle Gellar Freddie Prinze Jr. Andy Dick Wallace Shawn Patrick Warburton George Carlin Sigourney Weaver
Photography:	Color
Distributed By:	BFC Berliner Film Companie BAF Berlin Animation Film Vanguard Animation Nitrogen Studios Bardel Entertainment Mr. X Polygon Pictures Lionsgate
Release Date:	December 16, 2006 (Westwood, California) January 5, 2007 (United States)
Runtime:	87 minutes
Country:	United States Germany
Language:	English German
Budget:	$47 million
Box Office:	$38 million
Sequel:	Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple

Happily N'Ever After is a 2006 American-German computer-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 on December 16, 2006, was theatrically released on January 5, 2007, by Lionsgate, and was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 1, 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 24, 2009.

Plot

Fairy Tale Land becomes a realm of happy endings gone wrong when Cinderella's wicked stepmother, Frieda, joins forces with legendary villains to tip the balance between good and evil. With events spinning wildly out of control, Cinderella, or Ella for short, must lead a resistance movement to defeat Frieda and restore order to the kingdom.

Why It's Indeed Lived Happily NEVER After

Terrible writing and rather a forgettable story which the film tries too hard to make it seem like a movie much more similar to other successful fairy tale parody films like the first two Shrek films and Hoodwinked!, but 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 Netflix animated movie, Gnome Alone.
Very cheap and choppy CGI animation, even for 2007 standards, which can be dated by the mid-2000s.
- It's unbelievable that a 2007 CGI-animated movie like this has cheap animation, considering that TMNT, Meet the Robinsons, Shrek the Third, Surf's Up, Ratatouille, The Simpsons Movie, Bee Movie and Care Bears: Oopsy Does It! came out the same year and they all have far better 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) since they try to make comedy by using poorly-timed sound effects.
Uninteresting and unlikeable characters that seem to have ripped off various characters from better films.
- Mambo is a copy of Timon from The Lion King but is less funny and more annoying.
- Munk is also a copy of Pumba, Timon's partner and friend, who has the same unfunny comic reliefs to Mambo
- Rumpelstiltskin feels like a weak and rather pointless side antagonist who ends up redeeming himself near the end without any explanation or actual character development. It also isn't helped by the fact that the sequel completely undoes this by making him return as Lady Vain's sidekick (one of the many events in it that contradict the ones of the original film).
- Frieda, the film's main antagonist and Ella's stepmother from the Cinderella tale, feels like little more than your typical Generic doomsday villain than anything, as she lacks a proper or interesting motive for her actions apart from "I'm tired of us villains always getting the short end of the stick" (which, make no mistake, is better than her having no motive at all, but it could've certainly been much stronger).
  - She is only defeated by being punched by Ella and taking her into another dimension.
- Prince Humperdink, who is another generic strong, but a dumb, clueless character voiced by Patrick Warburton which is already done in films such as The Emperor's New Groove and Open Season.
- Rick used to be a self-centered brat who doesn't even much about himself and thinks that Prince Humperdink is useless.
- 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. Even this movie has some questionable casting choices, such as Andy Dick as Mambo.
While the songs and soundtrack was decent and nice to listen to, it's rather forgettable since the soundtrack features dated pop songs from the 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 character models (except some of them like Ella and Frieda) was very ugly and uncanny with awkward but noticeable expressions and very fast character movements.
The timing of this movie seems extremely off, as certain scenes which they go on for so long it’s not even funny (mainly the production company logos and credits being shown before the film lasts for two minutes).
- Also, the pacing is atrocious in which Munk, Mambo, Ella, Humperdink, and Rick need to go back to the castle, while Fairy Tale mischef starts.
Uninteresting chain of events such as the Munk and Mambo scenes featuring them in random shenanigans, that only serve to pad out the running time of the movie.
The movie can be mean-spirited at times such as Frieda forcing Ella to do chores while she and her stepsisters go to the ball (although to be fair, these are the events that occur in the original Cinderella story).
Boring fight scenes like the dwarfs fighting witches by using a machine to throw rocks at them.
Several plot holes and inconsistencies: particularly, how could the Dwarves have gotten captured by the villains when their house was villain-proof? It's also confusing that they were two different Friedas in this film.
The post-credits scene shows Frieda stranded in the Arctic where she's surrounded by elephant seals. This feels rather pointless as it doesn't advance the overall story other than showing what happened to her after she was defeated by Ella, and can even come off as sequel bait to some people (although it still isn't as bad as in some other movies like Free Birds).
The title sounds uninspired and somewhat pessimistic.
The Fairy Godmother forgets Ella's name every five seconds, even mistakingly calling her "salmonella".

Redeeming Qualities

Ella, Rick, Munk, Mambo, Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, the Fairy Godmother, the Giant, the Three Amigos, the Dwarves, and some others are all likable characters.
The concept of Fairy tale stories being controlled by someone sounds like an interesting idea for a story, but unfortunately, nothing much is done with it aside from the flaws that the film has.
The CGI animation (while being choppy) at least looks decent compared to the sequel, and it has some good qualities such as having a lot of effort and notable expressions; thanks to the CGI animation being done by four animation studios, for example:
- Nitrogen Studios (who animated the twelfth to sixteenth seasons of Thomas & Friends as well as Sausage Party)
- Bardel Entertainment (who did some DreamWorks Animation CGI shows, Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites and The Dragon Prince)
- Mr. X (who did the special effects in live action films)
- Polygon Pictures (who also did some effects in live action films, the sequences of non/Japanese media and did the rigging for Vanguard's previous film, Valiant)
It may be considered to be slightly better than the sequel.
Some of the character models like Ella, Rick, and Frieda's are very nice to look at.
The soundtrack and some songs, while being forgettable and dated are at least decent and nice to listen to.
Sigourney Weaver is the only actor to take her work seriously.

Reception

The film was widely panned and has a critic approval rating of 4% on Rotten Tomatoes 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 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." It also had a 4.5/10 on IMDb.

WatchMojo put it as the 9th worst animated film of all time, saying that the filmmakers forgot the edginess of other fairy tale spoof films, while AniMat gave it a 3 out of 10 and Animat's Steel of Garbage, criticizing it for its cheap animation, stupid characters and being an attempted copycat to Shrek.

The film even performed terribly worldwide, grossing a worldwide total of $30.1 million on a $47 million budget, making it a box-office failure. Despite this, the film somehow received a direct-to-video sequel which is received worse reviews than the first film itself to the point where some people say that the original was way better thus liking it for that reason.