Who's in It: The voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., George Carlin, Andy Dick, Sigourney Weaver, Wallace Shawn
The Basics: When the opening credits are interrupted so a smart-alecky narrator (Prinze) can talk directly to the audience and make an unfunny Narnia joke, when you realize that this thing is set smack-dumb-dab in a post-post-mod fairy-tale kingdom like Shrek, when you think to yourself, I liked this thing better when it was actually CALLED Shrek or Hoodwinked or whatever, then maybe you'll stop short of paying good money to see it.
What's the Deal? Oh, sorry, what's it about? Cinderella. Sort of. But because the premise involves an omniscient wizard and his helpers who live in the fairy-tale land and who control the outcomes of a constantly rerunning series of stories, all of which have predictably happy endings, and then when those people toy with the outcome so that the bad guys win, and when those bad guys express relief that finally, at long last, they get to win this time around, you being wondering to yourself how those bad people even understand that there's a predictable path they were supposed to be following in the first place. Do they have memory of all the times their evil was thwarted by goodness? Do they know the script they're being allowed to discard? Are they Calvinists?
My Favorite Part: The narrator actually says, mid movie, of a sticky situation unfolding on screen, that "it gets worse." And this is, of course, a lie. Because it gets as bad as it's going to get right at the beginning and doesn't waver from that. And really, that's plenty bad enough.
No Surprise/Big Surprise: Patrick Warburton voices the arrogant and stupid prince, as usual. But Andy Dick doesn't voice anyone even gay-adjacent.
But: The kids in the press screening shut up through most of the movie. That probably means something to you parents out there. You childless animation fans, however, can sit this one out.