Publication Date: 01-04-2026

Happily N’Ever After (2006) review

Dir. Paul Bolger

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

Fairytales are such indispensable stories in the collective conscience that they practically beg to be subverted for the sake of expectations. Animated movies in the 2000s were good for that, most notably with the Shrek series, which took a gaggle of familiar storybook characters and had them interact with a hulking green ogre and a talking donkey. Then there was Hoodwinked! in 2005; one of the first animated films produced outside of the Hollywood studio system that has gone on to be a cult classic for my generation.

A year later, Vanguard Animation’s Happily N’Ever After followed to much less fanfare than both those films. A box office bomb in 2006 — one that no less inspired a sequel, like so many other second-rate children’s films of this era — this fairytale opines the thought of a plethora of villains teaming up to abolish the concept of happy endings. It takes the story of Cinderella (who is known as Ella, and voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar) and tells it from the perspective of the Prince’s dishwasher, Rick (Freddie Prinze Jr.). Rick explains how he has Ella’s best interests in mind, as opposed to the rock-brained Prince (Patrick Warburton), who looks like Johnny Bravo and takes his cues from a book brazenly titled “How to Be a Prince.” Meanwhile, Ella’s Wicked Stepmother, Frieda (Sigourney Weaver), remains hellbent on destroying all things good for her stepdaughter, which starts with her discovering how/where happy endings are manufactured. It’s a secret cavern run by a wizard (George Carlin in one of his final works before his death in 2008), who is on holiday, with his workshop under the care of two ne’er-do-well assistants (Andy Dick and Wallace Shawn). They’re hardly an obstacle for Frieda, who gets them out of the way early in order to assure that nobody in the cornily named Fairytale Land is happy ever again.

Much of the humor in Happily N’Ever After derives from Rick, the narrator, breaking the fourth wall, going as far as to stop the film at various points in order to provide additional context with his self-deprecating ramblings. It’s funnier in theory than it is in practice. While Gellar, Prinze Jr., and Warburton have all been amusing in various movies and shows over the years, here, their lack of vocal range is put on display, which makes already flat, two-dimensional characters feel even more weightless.

One of the most glaring attributes in Happily N’Ever After isn’t the middling humor nor is it the hodgepodge of characters and fairytale archetypes. Frankly, it’s the rampant sexualization of most of the female characters. Almost every woman in this story is buxom or flaunting a callipygian figure, and before you call me the pervert, more than a handful of camera angles show the corset-wearing Wicked Stepmother or the stepsisters entering and leaving scenes with their behinds in clear view. Just when I thought no animated movie would beat Foodfight! in the sexualization department, here’s a fairytale that turns belles into bimbos.

Following this and their debut, Valiant, which was released with the help of Disney, Vanguard would find minor success with Space Chimps, which served as theatrical counterprogramming to The Dark Knight in 2008. Since then, their success has been muted much like their subsequent releases, their most recent being Rally Road Racers in 2023. Who would bother seeing that? The same man who still needs to see so many classics, but still spends time lost in the forest of mostly forgotten animated films.

Voiced by: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Sigourney Weaver, Patrick Warburton, Andy Dick, Wallace Shawn, Michael McShane, George Carlin, Tom Kenny, Rob Paulsen, Philip Proctor, and Tress MacNeille. Directed by: Paul Bolger.