Ella (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a Cinderella who has everything. Everything bad, that is! She has a list of chores, has to scrub the floors, and she gets treated like a slave. She’s got a wicked stepmother, Frieda, (Sigourney Weaver) and two gross stepsisters. But Ella also has a friend named Rick (Freddie Prinze Jr.) who is a dishwasher to the prince.

“Prince” (played by Patrick Warburton) is a muscular hunk who has a brain the size of a bowl of ice cream. All the characters that Patrick Warburton plays have been muscular and stupid, just like this one. Prince spends the film looking in a book to see what to do next. Rick, meanwhile, doesn’t understand why Ella is in love with the Prince instead of him.

Typical story? No way! Of course, that’s how things are when the wizard (George Carlin) runs things. When he decides to go to Scotland to play golf, he leaves his magic scepter to his goofy assistants, Munk and Mambo (Wallace Shawn and Andy Dick), but he warns them to keep watch on the good and evil scale. He also tells them not to let the bad guys get too powerful.

When Ella is not able to go to the ball because of Frieda’s orders, she cries and her fairy godmother comes and takes her to the ball and warns her that her magic will wear off at midnight, as usual. She is dancing with the prince when Frieda suddenly gains control of the magic scale and the scepter. When Frieda discovers Ella is at the ball and about to kiss the prince, she tips the scale and starts using the scepter to change all the fairy tales so the bad guys win.

Now, about the movie-where do I begin?! The animation was like the Barbie “straight to video” movie animation- in other words, it stunk! The characters were hunched over and they walked like robots. My mom said she didn’t see any chemistry (what the heck is that?) between Rick and Ella until the very end.

I didn’t like the way the story line went because the characters didn’t seem like their original fairy tales. For instance, the seven dwarfs were southern rednecks armed with artillery and camouflage.

There were some perks to this movie. There were a lot of actors that I knew, and I recognized the voices of some others. The two characters were Munk and Mambo because they were always funny and had some personality.

I’d recommend that you wait for the dollar movie for this one. The four year old behind us walked out with her family after half an hour.

I hope this isn’t the beginning of a long string of bad movies!

Rated PG for Pathetic Graphics.

** 1/2

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