Happily N'Ever After

Repeat after me: "There's no such thing as a good children's movie that opens in January."

There isn't. If it was great, they would roll it out at Christmas. If it was passably entertaining, they would hold it for March, that magical "Ice Age" window.

But the first weekend in January? A mix of late-opening Oscar contenders and the dregs of the studio barrel.

"Happily N'Ever After" is proof-positive that Europeans may have us beaten in soccer, wine and luxury cars, but they still can't make a decent 3-D cartoon. This inept, incompetently scripted pan-European animation is bad enough to make a parent reach for those "Barbie Swan Lake" direct-to-video atrocities, just to chase the images from the back of our retinas.

It's about trouble in Fairytale Land. And that trouble is as obvious as the opening credits. Freddie Prinze Jr. narrates. No doubt he and the Missus (Sarah Michelle Gellar) had great fun reliving their days from the live-action film adaptations of the "Scooby-Doo" cartoon. But that fun doesn't spill off the screen.

Prinze plays a plastic-faced servant, Rick, and Gellar is the put-upon (Cinder) Ella in a land where the wicked (and hot) stepmother, Sigourney Weaver, has upset the Happily Ever Afters in every tale from Rapunzel to Rumpelstiltskin. Little Red Riding Hood is eaten, Rapunzel has split ends, Sleeping Beauty won't awaken.

You get it. It's Sondheim's "Into the Woods," without the wit.

Frieda, the stepmom, seizes the magical control room where the tales are spun out. The wizard (George Carlin) who runs it is off playing golf, and his unfunny assistants (Wallace Shawn and Andy Dick) let the scepter fall into Frieda's hands. The bumbling fop prince (Patrick Warburton, not as much fun as usual) can't right the wrong.

So Rick, the waiter (Prinze), joins up with the drawling, redneck seven dwarfs and sets out to save the day.

The mediocre but very lucrative "Hoodwinked" ensured we would see a cut-rate cartoon every January for the foreseeable future. But this is one post-holiday tradition that the movies could do without.

The backgrounds are playful and colorful in this production. But the characters are video game animation, circa 2000 — expressionless. The sound mix buries the vocal talent behind the sound effects and music, losing whatever punch the actors could have given their really bad lines.

"This is like a good dream you can't wake up from," Frieda bellows.

The good news is, 85 tiresome minutes later, you do.

"Happily N'Ever After" is rated PG for some mild action and rude humor. Running time: 85 minutes.