Disney Sequelester - Cinderella II: Dreams Come True

Check out Fairy Godmother voguing
back there.

Dreams do come true... so whatever person wished for a Cinderella sequel, know that I hate you. Just know that.

On an unrelated note, this is a lovely time of year to visit Disney World!

One day after they get married, Cinderella and Princey pull up to the castle after their honeymoon. The movie explicitly states both of these as facts. Ummm... that is a very short honeymoon. But back to business, I guess, because Cinderella has to plan a banquet and Princey has to leave on business of indefinite kind.

"I know you're going to surprise us with an incredible feast." Yes, after meeting you at a ball, getting married, and having been on our extremely short honeymoon, I've known you for a total of three days, Cinderella. Thank goodness I know you so well now or all of this would be really weird.

This woman named Prudence (TOO SUBTLE) gets tasked with telling Cinderella all the ways in which she sucks and is not princessy enough. She can't tell cream from ecru, so she runs to her room sobbing hysterically about how she isn't good enough.

Crying after an extremely minor and stupid setback is
definitely the Disney Princess way.

On an artistic level, this is what irks me about Cinderella II. It's fairly boring, yeah, but it's decently animated and the writing isn't horrendous. The problem is that they clearly have no understanding of the source material. Like it or not, Cinderella does have substance: the message of patient faith. It's Not Another Christian Allegory. If you keep calm and carry on long enough, God will make you a princess. Or something like that.

This isn't a message I'm particularly interested in passing on to little girls, but it also wouldn't have been difficult to stick to Cinderella's personality traits (such as they are) of tolerance and faith. The only characteristic the screenwriters seem to have been aware of is "boring".

She's also not very bright. Cinderella has a meltdown and wants to know why they have to play by the royal rules. "And that rule about not letting commoners in the palace!" Yes, you have fun doing crowd control, Cinderelly.

And then there's a truly terrible pop song. It's not even being sung by an angsty teen princess. It's just meebling on the background about following your dreams while Cinderella waltzes around the town handing out invites to commoners, OH MY MOST IRREGULAR.

Yeah, the ball turns out to be the most wonderful thing a human being has ever done ever; try not to fall out of your seat in shock.

Then Jaq the mouse decides that he wants to be human. The Fairy Godmother apparently has nothing better to do than to poof around granting wishes willy-nilly to rodents, so she agrees, and turns him into Johnny Appleseed.

Fairy Godmother is a jerk.

Except it turns out that Jaq is even more useless as a human than he was as a mouse. At least nobody notices if you're a useless mouse, you know?

There's some other big fair that's somehow a circus with electricity, and there's an elephant, and Jaq scares it into submission by turning back into a mouse. Yes, this story is exactly as pointless as it sounds.

The final part of Cinderella II involves the evil stepsister Anastasia. She's being groomed for yet ANOTHER royal ball (little-known to the populace, an invading army is on the doorstep of France). But when she meets a humble baker, it's love at first bite. (I REGRET NOTHING.) Evil Stepmother forbids their romance, but Cinderella offers to help Anastasia win his heart through dress-up.

Cinderella is a lot more forgiving than I would be.

The funny thing about this storyline is that Anastasia continues to be a jerk throughout. She tries to bully Cinderella into giving her stuff, doesn't listen to her, and shoves people around. She scares babies with her smile (no really, it's in the script).

There's also an inane subplot about Lucifer falling in love with the castle
cat, which is almost worth it for the payoff of this shot.

When Anastasia finally gets up the guts to meet Baker Boy, she sees him rendezvousing with another woman, and flees in tears. And by "rendezvousing with" I mean "talking to right before her boyfriend comes over and smooches her", but hey, like you've never overreacted in your life.

Well this seems reasonable.

Through the miracle of the screenwriters getting bored, Baker Boy wanders up to the fountain she's crying by, they look at each other, and yay all their problems are solved! But mine aren't, because The Hunchback of Notre Dame II is next.