Plot: The mice from the original movie miss the re-telling of the Cinderella story, which they don’t need to hear because they were there the entire damn time. So, they decide to make their own storybook containing three stories after the original movie concluded.
Breakdown:
Ah, the Disney sequels. How pointless and utterly awful (most) of you are. I wasn’t excited about this as much as I was dreading it. I mean, come on, who wants a Cinderella 2? (Or 3 for that matter…..It exists.) It’s a pretty cut and dry story. It’s even worse considering that this movie isn’t so much a movie as it is three separate short stories comprised together to make one movie.
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The first short is Cinderella’s first day in the castle. Prince Whatshisface and King Evenmoreforgettable suddenly leave the castle to go to Plotdemandedthisland immediately after Cinderella’s honeymoon. She hasn’t even reached the door before they’re off on their carriages.
The king has an annual banquet coming up, and despite the fact that he’s supposedly completely anal about having every detail of the banquet being perfect and the fact that he was saying Cinderella had no clue how to be a princess mere moments ago, he puts the entire banquet planning in her hands. Madame Iforgotalready is tasked with training her to be a princess while she plans the banquet.
Cinderella is clearly intimidated the instant that she walks through the door, but becomes even moreso when she’s completely overwhelmed by Madame’s demands to be a presentable princess which include keeping the curtains closed, wearing dresses, standing up straight and NOT COOKING. Jeez, what a harpy. Though I do wonder about the curtains. There’s no other light source in that castle, why do they insist on keeping it so dark? So she walks out and whines and complains to the mice about what she’s going through.
Oh, I’m sorry Princess Cinderella. Is this lavish and wonderful life that quite literally fell into your slave lap not to your liking? I am so sorry for you. Have a Disney brand sad face.
She then decides to take matters into her own hands. She dons her regular clothes, takes to the streets and starts planning the banquet the way that she wants to. She invites commoners, who supposedly aren’t allowed in the castle despite commoners being invited to the ball from the last movie, makes up fun dances and makes chocolate pudding for dessert….Which is weird.
I should also mention that this entire thing goes on during a montage with a song that sounds more suited for Hannah Montana.
Everyone but Madame Underwearinabunch is pleased with her changes, but the big test comes when the King comes back! And, predictably, he’s at first enraged by the changes, but instantly changes his mind at each one. WHO OPENED THE CURTAIN >:0 –What a lovely moon! 😀 NO PRUNES FOR DESSER 😡 –HELL YEAH CHOCOLATE PUDDING! 😀
The Madame falls ill with a sudden bout of Disney princess speed-love with the King’s adviser and Cinderella and the Prince kiss. The end.
Well, how boring.
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The next segment focuses on Jaq (The mouse.) He’s too small to help Cinderella in the big house she now resides in, so the Fairy Godmother, not content to let anyone try to fix their problems on their own, turns Jaq into a human. Because you were always curious what that would be like when watching the first Cinderella, right? What Jaq would be like as a human? Oh and Cinderella’s tasked with planning yet another party because no one else ever does a damn thing.
Jaq is also being stalked by the royal evil cat, Paw-paw or something. Because they needed a stand-in for Lucifer from the last movie. Kinda like how the crocodile from Peter Pan was replaced with an octopus in the sequel. This cat is also stalking Jaq as a human now because, by cat logic, and I’m not making this up, one human equals a lot of friggin’ mice. So we might see a guy being mauled to death by a fluffy white kitty.
Skip yet another horrific poppy crap song.
While trying to explain to Cinderella who he is, he’s mistaken for some other guy who’s famous/rich/royalty take your pick. Long story short, he starts screwing everything up and this somehow causes him to make an elephant that the King is riding on at the festival go crazy. The Fairy Problem Solver comes back and tells him that this is the perfect time for him to help because all elephants are afraid of mice.
So he decides to turn back, but for some reason not at that second. He goes back and tries to stop the elephant while still in human form while FGM stands there forgetting her magic words. If only she had a song written about them! And she turns him back into a mouse right in front of everyone. Jaq is reunited with Mary (girl mouse) and Cinderella commends him for coming through when she needs him….Ya know, especially considering that he was the cause of every problem that occurred there.
Lesson learned: If you can’t help with other problems, create problems that only you can solve.
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The final segment is the one I was waiting for – the one where Anastasia, one of Cinderella’s evil bitch stepsisters, falls in love. Because I know I, as well as everyone else in the world, really wanted to see one of Cinderella’s hag sisters fall in love and live happily ever after. Other than having a movie portraying what really happened to the orange and male cub at the end of The Lion King, that is one of my most valued Disney mysteries.
Oh and in case you’re wondering how long it takes HER to find her love and fall in love (At first sight of course); clocked in at 3 minutes, 21 seconds. Yes. I timed it. Be jealous of how cool I am.
Now I’m fairly certain that we’re supposed to take Anastasia’s somewhat OOCness as off-screen character development. Like she saw Cinderella get whisked away by a prince and fall in love so now she’s rethinking her own life and imagining what it’s like to fall in love. However, since we didn’t see this transformation, it’s still OOCness. And she’s still a bitch, so I don’t know what we’re supposed to feel here.
Anyhoo, as she’s in the marketplace looking for a new dress to wear so that she can find a man at YET ANOTHER PARTY THAT CINDERELLA’S HOLDING
she’s lured into a bakery by the smell of freshly baked bread and comes face to face with her true love who actually looks like a real person holy frickin’ crackers. However, she’s torn away from him after their exchange of two lines of dialogue and thus Cinderella deduces that love has been torn asunder.
I think there’s something in the water in every Disney movie ever made, and it’s probably mutated pheromones.
She tries to help by getting her various animal friends to bring them together, but ends up making Anastasia crash into the bakery getting covered in baking products, and she runs out crying and embarrassed. She’s made into a laughingstock and runs to a hidden fountain (Because people hide fountains apparently). Nice going, Cinderblockhead.
Oh and Lucifer (suddenly) falls in love with Poo-poo or whatever her name is so the mice help him get her, because we need to fill up that ENTIRE hour and ten minutes, counting five minutes of credits.
Cinderella takes Anastasia to the castle to give her a makeover to get the baker’s heart. It’s here where we get another musical montage (Set to a makeover. How original.) that is by far the worst of the movie. Not only is the song awful, but the lyrics are “It’s what inside that counts” set to a makeover montage! ♪ It’s what’s inside that counts as long as you look hot. ♪
You know what else I love? That makeover montage was 100% pointless. She and Lucifer (Yeah, the mice gave him one) go back to looking exactly the same once they leave the castle mere moments later.
Cinderella brings Anastasia to the marketplace to see the baker, and Anastasia sees the baker showing a ring of flowers (Meant to be a sign of love during the party thing) to an unnamed woman who’s just his friend. It’s established beforehand that she is just his friend and that he’s intending on giving the flowers to Anastasia, so there’s no tension here. We know exactly what will happen. She’ll see them together, think he’s giving the flowers to her, run off crying in despair, mope around for a while and then he’ll find her, explain the big misunderstanding and then they’ll live happily ever after.
Meanwhile Lucifer presents a bouquet of fish to Ping-pong, and, after deeming him physically appropriate after, I guess, another makeover and taking the fish, she falls for him too. Predictably, they decide to now team up against the mice. After getting water dumped on her head by Jaq, she slams the fish bouquet on Lucifer’s head and walks away….How was that his fault? How did that make sense? Could you really not find a better way to pan out a few minutes in this movie?
The baker looks everywhere for Anastasia, but can’t find her and the flower ring gets eaten by some random goat that comes out of nowhere, leaving him with a tattered flower. Coincidentally, Anastasia is crying on the same fountain that he came to mope on (Fountains: great for the morbidly depressed) He gives her the flower and never is the other woman brought up. Why even have that plotline…or plotdot there to begin with then? She just accepts the flower and we get Carnation instant love.
The evil stepmother and Drizella (other step sister) see them, and she tries to take her away from the baker claiming he’s not good enough to date. They then take her flower and throw it on the ground. Anastasia refuses to go with them, claiming that she’s in love with the baker (Who never gets a name, by the way. Real important character you are, Mr. Nameless.)
Somehow he deduced that she’s sweet even though no evidence was given towards that, and states that they’re also going to the ball together. Stepbitch and Drizella, who is staring at them in such a way that I can imagine yet another story like this popping up, then go away. Anastasia and baker then dance by the fountain, which transitions to dancing in the ball and that’s the end of that story.
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The mice then show Cinderella the book and they read it even though they just spent the last hour telling the stories and, ya know, they were all there for those events…. I guess mice have awful memories. And speaking of awful, this was awful.
Why did they need to separate it into three stories? It would’ve worked a lot better if one story (probably the last one) had been kept and fleshed out into an actual movie. Show how Anastasia developed from a bitch into a slightly nicer bitch in love. Show the emotional turmoil of transitioning from a peasant into a princess, even though that’s a stretch. Show….okay the second story’s unusable, but you get my point. This just seems like a disjointed mess of “What if’s” and “Do you wonder what happened after?”
The stories are boring, make little sense and what sense I can make out of them makes me mad.
We also end on a pop song for the credits with Cinderella references in it.
Oh and Tress MacNeille voices Anastasia here. She played Babs in Tiny Toons and Dot in Animaniacs, so that was incredibly distracting.
Bottom Line: All in all, this ‘movie’ isn’t a movie. It’s three shorts cobbled together to barely pass as a TV movie. The shorts themselves are stupid and usually don’t make much sense. This might be nice for really young kids to keep them quiet for an hour, but other than that it’s just not worth your time.
Recommended Audience: It’s Cinderella….And Disney….do the math.
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