Ella (voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Rick (voiced by Freddie Prinze, Jr.) get close in 'Happily N'Ever After'. - Contributed

(AP):

When Hoodwinked came out a year ago, it felt like a poor man's Shrek. Guess that makes this totally uninspired offering a poor man's Hoodwinked. It wouldn't seem possible, but this is yet another fractured fairytale in which the characters subvert their own genre in self-conscious, smart-alecky fashion.

The doofus prince (voiceover veteran Patrick Warburton) knows what to say and do because a book tells him to. The wizard's diminutive assistants (Wallace Shawn and Andy Dick), who help keep control of the story lines in Fairy Tale Land, are bored silly watching Sleeping Beauty and Rumplestiltskin do the same things over and over.

That is until the power-hungry evil stepmother (Sigourney Weaver), who's tired of happy endings herself, takes control and turns everything upside down. It might have been a clever idea; instead, the film consists of a few snappy one-liners and too much filler.

After an hour this just dies, and Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr., as Cinderella and serving boy Rick are the last people you want trying to revive it. Could there be a more boring real-life couple around whom to build a movie? Even rendering them in animated form doesn't make them any more animated.