Happily Ever After

Disney is theatrically re-releasing its 1937 classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs this summer, so there's no time better than the present to break this all-new animated Snow White tale, Happily Ever After. Less a Disney knockoff than a genuine new chapter in the Snow White canon, Happily Ever After begins where the Disney version leaves off. Snow White and her prince are traveling through the forest to extend wedding invitations to the Seven Dwarfs. Then the lovers become separated by evil forces that keep them apart 'til the end of the movie. Rather than ape the story of Snow White, Happily Ever After borrows liberally from the Wizard of Oz as our heroine is plucked away by big flying creatures and taken to a castle where her friends must rescue her while learning a thing or two about their inner strengths along the way. Sexes are reversed in this version. Instead of the jealous evil queen we have her vengeful evil brother (though, minus the competitive envy regarding Snow White's beauty, the story is stripped of much of its driving edge). Instead of Seven Dwarfs, Happily Ever After has female Dwarfelles, a kind of seven sisters affiliation of nature forces. These gals have their moments, what with the voices of actresses like Tracey Ullman, Carol Channing and Phyllis Diller animating their characters. Zsa Zsa Gabor extending advice to Snow White on how to marry a prince and keep him happy is certainly extra fun (and all within its G-rated context). Still, the music is less than memorable to these ears, though I imagine there will be some kids who will differ with me on that point. There's a strong anti-smoking message that, despite good intentions, comes across as a tacked-on moral afterthought. The cel animation methods employed by Happily Ever After, which boasts that no computers were used, shows only slight improvement over the modern machine methods. (Hand-drawn animation is just too prohibitively expensive and laborious to ever have a fair chance of competition in the current marketplace.) So this new age Snow White who rescues her prince with the help of the Dwarfelles and who conveys good messages about self-empowerment, smoking and the environment has a lot to recommend her. It's just that with her hair by My Little Pony and her outfit like some standard Disney issue, this Snow White sometimes feels about as authentic as the version that appeared in that infamous Academy Awards ceremony. And there's no Rob Lowe anywhere in sight.