Hot-buttered opinion on the latest flicks

Happily N'Ever After

Thu., Jan. 4, 2007 4:43 PM PST by Luke Y. Thompson

Movie titles don’t get much more truthful.

This is billed as being from the producer of Shrek and Shrek 2, a more-or-less meaningless designation considering there are 10 or so others billed that way, but if John H. Williams really wants the credit, so be it. We must assume that he found Shrek 2 insufficiently obnoxious, ugly, stupid and pseudo-hip and decided to remedy things with an indigestible piece of computerized crappery that wouldn’t pass muster on the Xbox.

Somehow, Sigourney Weaver got herself roped into playing the wicked stepmother in this cracked Cinderella story—irritatingly narrated by Prince Charming’s handsome servant (Freddie Prinze Jr.)—in which all fairy tales apparently play on an endless loop for the amusement of a powerful wizard (George Carlin) who lives in the attic of the prince’s own castle.

But when the wizard buggers off to Scotland to play golf, his goofy assistants (Wallace Shawn and Andy Dick) go all sorcerer’s apprentice on his stuff, throwing the narrative balance out of whack and accidentally enabling the tilting of the magical cosmic scale toward evil.

Oddly, when the scale is perfectly balanced in the center, good always triumphs...so, what would happen if it were tilted toward good? Presumably, this movie would spontaneously cease to exist.