I'm getting into a horrible trend here. The first film I saw from 2006 was also a Disney direct-to-video sequel of a classic film (Bambi II). I have children; what can I say? As for this one, I saw a trailer for it some time ago, and I will say that it's probably one of the cleverest Disney sequel concepts I've ever heard: the evil-stepmother gets ahold of the fairy godmother's wand and rewrites history so Cinderella loses? Now there's an idea! Too bad they screwed it up in execution.
The name of the game here is contrivance. To believe this plot, you have to accept that some of this stuff would actually happen. Even if you accept magic and talking mice as a property in this world, it still rings as largely unbelievable and contrived. To begin with, Cinderella's discarded step-family has to get the wand. How is this done? The fairy godmother is casting this and that in preparation and just tosses the wand off to one side. It lands in front of Anastasia who is watching them, and she runs off with it to mother. Apparently, while in most magic worlds, the wand is little more than a channel for the caster's natural ability, in this world, the fairy godmother has no power at all without the wand, which grants its caster unlimited power, allowing the step-mother to turn back time to when the arch-duke comes to call with the glass slipper.
From here, it only gets worse. Here's a short list. Cinderella's stepmother does interfere with the shoe session, shrinking Anastasia's foot into the shoe and intercepting Cinderella on the stairs, smashing hers. Her step-family travels by coach to the palace. Cinderella decides she'll sneak in and see the prince so he'll remember her. She walks to the palace and somehow beats her family there. She and the mice split up inside the palace to look for the prince...ok. The mice tell Cinderella about the magic and stepmother having the wand, but seem to have an intimate knowledge of what happened to fairy godmother, even though they could not have known this. When they go after the wand, the mice make a big mess in her step-family's room, and Cinderella decides to be the maid to clean it up. Sure, no one will recognize her even though she hasn't changed clothes from that morning. Of course, she was recognized, but now they have the wand and rather than take the wand, Cinderella allows the mice to carry it through the palace in this idiotic sequence where they use it on Lucifer. Why didn't she pick it up? Then she does this long chant where she tries to fix the prince, but somehow, she is interrupted even though the phrase "bibbiti bobbiti boo" is made to be quick. Yup, those are the "magic words."
If you can believe it, the contrivances continue to worsen as we keep going. The stepmother assures the prince she will handle Cinderella "personally," even though she has no authority in the palace whatsoever. In fact, timeline-wise, she's only been in the palace a few hours. Well, she orders the guard to banish Cinderella from the kingdom and put her on the next boat out of the country, never to return. Say what?! As important as she thinks she is, there is no way this pauper woman from the country can order someone to be banished...even if her daughter is set to marry the prince. She's also been the very vision of rudeness to these people, and I can't figure out why they would tolerate her. She bullies the guards, rejected the wedding preparations, and even bullies the arch-duke...and gets away with it! Anyway...
So far, I'm not really spoiling anything in my opinion given the overall predicatability here. Cinderella ends up on a boat with no visible crew sailing out of town when princey shows up after a song and dance of the mice (who, to increase the bad movie score, gives the line, "love the song"), produces a mystery dagger out of no where which also disappears into no where, slices his way down the boat sail Peter Pan style, and rescues Cinderella from her banishment. no one reacts to the prince doing this, since there is no crew visible anywhere on this boat. We saw them briefly open the sails and pull in the plank, but that was it. They're invisible, and likely now pissed because they have to turn around, let this guy and his woman off, and replace the sail.
Big twist! Ooooh! Aaaah!
Moving on, Stepmother still has the wand so she's able to continue wreaking havoc on our poor heroine by whisking her off to inside a pumpkin carriage driven by Lucifer and a random horse. This pumpkin carriage has vines with thorns that wrapped around this horse in one big piece...but for some reason, this carriage has a pin linking it to the horse. Huh? Why would a pumpkin and vine carriage have a pin linking the two sections together? I thought it was one piece. Why, to facilitate the plot, of course! Yadda-yadda, stuff happens, and Cinderella rushes off to stop the all-new inevitable sequel to the first almost wedding between prince (What is this guy's name? Anyone?) and Anastasia. For some reason, stepmother (she needs a name, too) and Drizella are hiding behind the curtain watching where no one out of several hundred people ever sees her, and the prince (when she whisper-shouts "say 'I do!'" to Anastasia) never hears her. That was just weird. And for ultra-weird, there is a resolution that takes advantage of the villain monologue that is just annoying.
Add to this all the wonderfully cheesy dialogue between most of the characters and some mostly forgettable and unnecessary songs, and you get this movie. It was an idea that had so much potential for being awesome, and with four writers, you'd think you'd get something worthwhile, but unfortunately no. You get a series of little more than plot points and a 74 minute film that could have benefited from a little more explanation and characterization.
Now what did go right here was the inclusion of the step-sisters as actual characters and their playing into the plot in a bigger way than the original. In the original, they were all pretty interchangeable and little more than obstacles to overcome. This time, Anastasia gets some serious time and life to her. Drizella is still just a grumpy chick who is avoidable. Granted, it's still not much, but it's a little something.
We've also got some scenes that work very well and are actually well written. The moment between stepmother and Cinderella at the beginning where stepmother smashes the other glass slipper. The priceless moment where prince walks into the room with Anastasia wearing the slipper, stopping with a look of horror, and asking if he were in the right room. That scene has got to be the highlight of this film. It is only followed up with the moment (after a really dumb food fight) where the king and prince show up, look at the trashed room, and the king asks if they're in the right room then too. It shows at least one of these guys can write.
In the end, this is an example of an idea with some awesome potential go terribly wrong in the execution. All the clever little "what ifs?" from the trailer do play out, but when it's all over, I just shake my head and wish they'd gotten someone better to draw the whole thing up.
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