Part 2.
Part 3.
I was really slacking off on writing this, but in my defense, I thought I'd be really clever in finishing up this movie this month since February was the month of love and all that.
Now, normally, I reserve this space for one again mentioning that this movie is weird (as if you really need me telling you that), this movie is still a guilty pleasure of mine, it was a big favorite of me growing up, various excuses to make myself feel better for liking this stupid movie, yadda yadda yadda, but I have a very special treat in store for my readers for this final part of Happily Ever After.
While I was writing the post up for Part 3, I learned that there is an honest to god Happily Ever After videogame.
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| This might be the greatest thing I've ever seen. |
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| Yeah, remember the part of the movie where Snow White climbed on a giant beanstalk and watched Scowl drop bunches of grapes on her? |
Happily Ever After Part 4
When we last left Snow White and her friends, who happen to be on the quest to kill a blue-skinned man who can turn into a "horrid bird", they had, after receiving their blessings from Phyllis Diller, traveled through a cave to enter The Realm of DOOM! Along the way, they met the cleverly named Shadow Man, a hideously deformed yet amazing goblin of a man who bares more than a passing resemblance to Orko from He-Man. And, despite his grotesque appearance and his inability to say anything more elaborate than "No!" and "Get back!", he's really a good guy, because he ends up helping Snow White and her seven useless companions (considering the Dwarfelles contributed absolutely nothing to the plot other than name recognition) escape from weird, disturbing rhino-wolves Lord Maliss (who is related to the Wicked Queen and wants Snow White dead or whatever, his motives for revenge kind of deteriorate over time) sent after them. Meanwhile, Malcolm McDowell entertained himself by torturing an owl and yelling at a mirror with a face glued to it. And fun times were had by all.
Basically all Part 3 did, because it honestly didn't have very many things happen in it compared to the first two parts I did, was reinforce what I already knew about this cartoon; that they're not even going to try to make any of these have any sort of logic, nor are they going to have this be at all similar to the fairy tale this is based on, beyond having seven dwarfs and a character named Snow White. But since this cartoon has just introduced Shadow Man and made him a major player in this production, and anything Shadow Man does (except for getting his foot trapped underneath a rock) is going to be awesome, I'm going to allow this.
And speaking of the Shadow Man, what a better way to start this post than to talk about the most famous scene in the entire movie, the one that made everyone with two X-chromosomes go "D'awwww..." and draw shipping art involving him. If you've seen this movie and happened to be a girl, chances are, this is what left an impact. Ignoring the frightening, mind-scarring imagery involving dead queens of course.
What happens is that after Shadow Man saves them from the wolves and the entire group passes out by the camp fire (and I mean this literally with the Dwarfelles; some of them look like they're dead while the camera does a pan), he decides to mysteriously flee into the night for some strange, never-explained reason. But since limping away while smacking the ground with a walking cane isn't exactly the stealthiest escape in the world, Snow White wakes up, sees him, and chases after him, conveniently eliminating the Dwarfelles from the scene that follows.
And, since there won't be a Moonbeam or a Marina to foul up the air with their auras of wasted potential, what follows is a surprisingly tender moment between Snow White and the Shadow Man as she thanks him for everything he's done. She gives him what is basically a ten page term paper on how she knew he was trying to protect them back at the cave and how grateful she is to have such a great friend with creepy fingernails and grimy hobo clothes. And, while she's thanking him, Shadowthe Hedgehog just gets more and more embarrassed, as if he's unsure if Snow White's just luring him into a false sense of security before she makes with the horrible beatings. Poor guy can't handle compliments too well.
I also have to say that the scene where the Shadow Man listens to Snow White ramble on about how he's been watching over her has some surprisingly good animation while the malformed little goblin turns in space. It's probably rotoscoped (Snow White sometimes slips into it, which is ironic because that's what her Disney counterpart is known for) but it's still surprising to see honest to god good animation in this film.
Before Shadow Man can respond to these kind words, possibly with a gruff "Get back!" or a "No!" (the only three words in his vocabulary), The Dwarfelles notice her absence and call for her, which means she has to head back. I like how the Dwarfelles, who were entrusted with guarding Snow White by Mother Nature herself, don't even notice when she completely wanders away from camp even though there's seven of them. I'm beginning to see why there's an issue about them losing their job. I would love to see their performance reviews.
So while she travels back to camp, she offers for the Shadow Man to come with them and help them on their magnificent quest of killing an overdramatic man in a bad Renn Faire getup. At first, he follows, until he spots a lake and stops in his tracks, as if alarmed by his own reflection. I know this is setting up the overused "hideous monster sees his reflection and then has major feelings of angst about it" scene, but I can't help but wonder how Shadow Man is not aware of how bad he looks when he clearly designed his clothing very carefully so that no one can see him! Unless someone else dressed him, but that just raises further questions.
Note the backgrounds, by the way. Avant-garde style monochromatic painting is not something that can be easily pulled off, especially when it comes to low-budget animated films that inexplicably got a theatrical release. There is such a thing as too much blue, Lord Maliss! Your Realm of Doom could use a little complementary colors. Or even some purples. Something!
When our deformed little hero sees his reflection, something interesting happens. He gasps in pain, starts to cry, recites Linkin Park lyrics in his head, and then actually starts kicking the lake while screaming "No!". That Shadow Man, he always had a way with words.
As you can tell, this scene is a very glaringly obvious, "Las Vegas casino sign with flashing lights and a half-naked lady" hint as to what happened with the prince. Remember when, about several months ago due to me being lazy and taking my sweet time with these blog posts, Lord Maliss shot the prince with an eye laser that was supposed to do something very special? Yeah, I didn't want to give this away, but since I figured this out at the age of five from this scene I might as well say it. The Shadow Man is the prince. That's why he's protecting Snow White. This was Lord Maliss's punishment. If you were spoiled by this, tough crap, you should've figured this out by now.
I still like this scene, with its oddly better-than-the-rest-of-the-movie animation and facial expressions. I like to imagine that Filmation only had enough room on their budget for one good animator since crappy ones are easier to pay, and they figured the good animator could deal with Shadow Man's big scene. Which is ironic because he's the one character who people won't notice if he's off-model on account of how butt-ugly he is.
The Prince, whoops, I mean the Shadow Man is so disgusted by his own reflection (so what, did he not see his face in the water when he was following Snow White through the freaking waterfall?) that he runs off in the opposite direction. This turns out to be a really, really stupid move on his part because Snow White ends up being captured by Lord Maliss shortly afterwards. I love how excellent this timing is because this happened after Snow White gave a touching speech on how the Shadow Man is watching over her and protecting her from danger. Hah hah, ouch.
Also, Snow White's face will never not be funny to me. Lord Maliss's appearance and then reuse of the same eye laser zapping animation as when he attacked the prince is so surprising that Snow White has decided to bug out her eyes and shove almost all of her fingers into her mouth. Everyone copes with stressful situations differently, I guess.
After Lord Maliss actually does something smart by turning into a dragon, catching Snow White by surprise, shooting her with a laser to paralyze her, and then turning back into the dragon to carry her off (holy crap, Lord Maliss actually used logic!), Shadow Man is so frustrated by this that he climbs onto a tall rock, flings his fists in the air, and loudly screams in a way that's both heartbreaking and hilarious. Heartbreakilarious, if you will.
...totally naming my death metal band that, by the way.
The Dwarfelles are sad that they suck at this whole guarding thing they're supposed to do and decide to fight back. Except for Critterina, who, thanks to the shock that was Lord Maliss outsmarting them, suffered a heart attack and died while standing up, her arms still at their sides due to the amazing effects of dwarf rigor mortis. At least, thanks to the inappropriate facial expression, that's totally what it looks like. It's like this film has ceased taking itself seriously, knows its animation is never going to rise to Disney-level, and decided to just roll with it and attempt to amuse me with silly faces instead. Gotta hand it to you, Filmation. It's working.
But ignoring Critterina leaving this world (my condolences to that giant rabbit that appeared once during Thunderella's song and never again), why isn't Shadow Man helping them? They have a common enemy and a common goal, and chances are they'll be radically more successful if they work together. Plus, with Shadow Man's amazing ability to push things over, nothing can stop them!
The film, then realizing that it had a plot thread it needs to tie up before it can get to the serious climax scenes that are sure to follow, then decides to check up on Scowl, who is seriously making sounds that remind me more of someone trying to pass a kidney stone than someone hooting like an owl. It's a simple scene, filled with as many "bad"-related puns as possible and meant to entertain the younger kiddies in the audience, but it does get an honestly funny line from Scowl. Batso, never being able to see the forest for the trees, says that he's worried that Scowl's smoking habit is going to kill him while his friend is about ready to fall into a vat of boiling liquid, which causes Scowl to say this.
"I'm about to be owl stew and he's worried about smoking."
Okay, points for an decent line with decent line delivery. It's sad that something as simple as this made me giggle, but then again, it's Ed Asner. He's always amazing.
And Batso's such a dick if he's seriously treating this whole situation like a joke and cracking more bad jokes even when Scowl's about to die. Does he not see the rope, the cauldron of lethal boiling soup, and the fire slowly cutting the rope? Seriously, Batso? This isn't adorable, it's obnoxious!
Long story short, Scowl escapes, but he barely escapes with his life thanks to Batso being either a total dumbass or totally malicious (it's hard to tell if he's honestly dumb or just playing dumb to get a rise out of Scowl sometimes) and once again, America's favorite smoking owl is free, able to live life while complaining about smoking bans in restaurants and loathsomely aggressive cigar taxes.
I honestly am not at all surprised that Scowl lived, considering the very nature of that booby trap gives him an 100% chance of survival since Lord Maliss just walked away, but in fairness to the cartoon, do you really think Filmation would totally show an owl dying from scalding water onscreen when they're trying to compete with Disney with a pale imitation of one of their films? Not when Scowl has yet to fulfill his role on providing the cartoon with a moral involving smoking! Even though, logically, you can just as easily make a Saturday Morning-style moral on his pride (he sung an entire song on how bad he is) or his constant insistence on helping his superiors when it's obvious his help is going to bring productivity down.
Since his boss did just try to kill him in a rather gruesome fashion, Archimedes Scowl decides to leave the castle, saying that he wants to put as much distance between him and Maliss as physically possible. Holy mother of god, you mean to tell me that Scowl actually learned something from how badly Lord Maliss was treating him and figured out that it's not worth the trouble being bossed around by a magic-user whose method of employee feedback involves elaborate death traps? Logically speaking, this is an excellent way to just write Scowl out from the rest of the movie. He could find some other enchanted forest, find a lovely female owl who happens to have a drinking problem, have an entire family of owlets with various lung and liver problems...
Nah, I'm just kidding. Scowl was going to leave, but then he saw the Dwarfelles approach the castle and now he's seriously going to try one last time to please Lord Maliss even though his boss has just tried to boil him to death. Gotta admire someone with that much lethal persistence.
So Scowl (and Batso, because he decided he's going to humor his frighteningly reckless companion) is going to please Lord Maliss by...grabbing one of the Dwarfelles while they're gathered at the gates and carrying her to the castle.
...no offense guys, but if Lord Maliss wanted Dwarfelles, he can just morph into that badass dragon/wyvern/horrid bird thing. Just sayin'.
And while they somehow manage to carry Sunburn through the air without her slipping out of her dress, Scowl temporarily morphs into a terrifying demonic entity in a weird "blink and you'll miss it" part of the scene where they completely botch the color of Scowl's eyes.
I'm not sure what the hell is up with the animation for this last act, but the characters get off-model a lot more often, but with the added bonus of having slightly smoother if a lot more cartoony animation. Seriously, after the scene with the Shadow Man at the lake, it's like the movie is handled by an entirely different studio. One that likes to animate deformed Dwarfelles and satanic owls.
They try their best to carry the post-op Heat Miser to Lord Maliss's wing (and really, they could've had a lot easier time grabbing literally any other dwarf than Sunburn), but since they're mere animals carrying a fat porkroast of a woman, all their plan does is drop Sunburn right next to the drawbridge mechanisms, allowing the Dwarfelles to get into the castle to save Snow White.
Or, to put this in different words, Scowl totally doomed his master's plan and is the reason why the day ends up getting saved in the end, all because he couldn't resist taking one final stab at being bad. And this hasn't been the only time Scowl's accidentally prevented Lord Maliss from killing Snow White. Good job, Scowl!
Once the Dwarfelles storm the castle, the animated film decides to, like Lord Maliss, use black magic to magically change form. Only instead of turning into a dragon horrid bird, the cartoon turns into a pale imitation of a Looney Tunes short. See, what happens is that once the Dwarfelles are inside the evil castle, several evil minions that are instantly recognizable from the opening scenes try to stop them, and props like falling chandeliers and suits of armor are used to quickly dispatch the Queen's useless evil minions. Not much to say here, other than if you're aware of the names "Warner Bros." or even "Hannah-Barbera", then you've probably seen these sight gags in other, better cartoons. Hell, they even managed to work in a spiral staircase gag! I was surprised they had enough restraint to avoid using banana cream pies or falling anvils.
This scene also gets pretty depressing once you realize that this was supposedly the scene that shows off exactly how strong Lord Maliss's army of mutant creatures are. This is the only line of work these creatures are capable of getting in this kingdom (because I really doubt a giant crocodile monster can receive a blacksmith apprenticeship) and they absolutely suck at their job. All they wanted was the approval of a tyrant with knee-high boots! Now all they can do now is wait for some band of heroes to slay them in a random encounter and loot their bodies for gil and rare item drops.
Although this is a good explanation why Lord Maliss didn't send any of these mutants after Snow White earlier. It's like he realized his sister left him some pretty pisspoor evil minions and said "To hell with it, I'm using wolves with ridiculous rhino horns".
After that scene of pointlessness ends, we get Snow White, who is doing what she does best; passing out in random places, only to wake up in a brand new set piece. But wait! This time, The Prince is standing over her! Hooray, she discovered the prince!
...by fainting while being carried off in the air by a random dragon and it's not really explained why Lord Maliss would just let his prisoners roam around his castle without being locked up or heavily guarded and this is totally a trap, isn't it.
When Snow White wakes up, overjoyed that she somehow managed to save her prince from Lord Maliss by being kidnapped by Lord Maliss and then passing out. However, even though these two are completely alone and are supposedly about ready to be married, Snow White still calls him "my prince" as opposed to any first name. Geez. Poor guy either doesn't have a name or is seriously named Prince, meaning that I can now picture him singing "When Doves Cry".
The Prince (who, spoiler alert, isn't really the prince) is all kinds of amazing in this scene, because nothing's funnier than seeing the object of Snow White's affections treating her pretty rudely and just hauling her around like a sack of company-destroying potatoes. Unlike the previous scene with the Prince in them where all he exhibited was love for his future wife and later righteous fury over a wyvern hauling his bride away, this Prince acts like the mere act of breathing the same air as Snow White is a laborious chore not worth his time, and man does his face reflect that.
In fact, the Prince is so rude and surly that he even adopts the same sneer that's snuck its way onto a certain someone's face on more than one occasion. Hell, I could even go the extra mile and say that all you have to do is imagine the prince with a mustache, green skin, maybe a little eyeshadow, and Malcolm McDowell's voice and you can immediately figure out what is going on here.
As you can probably guess, a certain dragon-y being that loves chewing the scenery and wearing pink is trying his hand at a different kind of spell. One that, in my opinion, seems like such a big waste of everyone's time because if he wanted to transport Snow White somewhere, all he has to do is whip out his eyebeams. I guess it's kind of a clever allusion to how the Wicked Queen fooled Ms. White into eating an apple laced with rat poison by using a disguise, but then that brings up the question as to why Lord Maliss isn't even trying to pretend like he's the Prince here. It's a good thing Snow White is so consumed by the power of One True Love to notice any bizarre behavioral changes in her significant other or else this plan never would've worked.
So Lord Maliss, whoops, I mean The Prince then uses a secret passageway to take Snow White to their special hiding place that totally isn't a trap. Again, the damsel in future distress doesn't even question how The Prince knows of this secret passageway or where it leads, because she's a total dumbass. Watching this scene is so frustrating because this takes place after Snow White has demonstrated time and time again that she can use logic and see past appearances; it's like her brain suddenly disappears the moment a man is around to do the thinking for her. Snow White, for the love of all that is holy, your worst enemy can use magic! Thiiiiink!
Course, I doubt Lord Maliss morphing into the prince ever crossed her mind because he can just turn into a dragon and kill her that way. And yes, I know I've brought up the dragon argument more than once while covering this movie, but it really pokes a hole in every single plot Lord Maliss conceives. Except for the ones that involve turning into a dragon, of course. Because he can turn into a dragon.
Right after Snow White and Prince Totally-Not-The-Bad-Guy enter the passageway, the Dwarfelles burst into the room, propelled by their own uselessness. The passageway had already shut, but luckily, it turns out The Mirror randomly decided to be a good guy at the last moment and gives them, in riddle, a hint to the secret door. You never hear a reason as to why he wants to help the creatures that he was previously spying on, but to be fair, Lord Maliss was kind of prick to this character for the entire movie. His sudden betrayal isn't totally unfounded.
Although I'm not sure how this benefits the Magic Mirror. Either way, he's going to be stuck on that wall for the rest of his life, doomed to collect dust and mouse droppings for eons until some earthquake or clumsy rat monster housemaid finally knocks him over and he shatters. He doesn't seem to mind his sedentary life too badly (he never complains about it anyway), but considering he has free will and can make decisions of his own, you can't help but wonder if he's showing kindness to these dwarfs because he secretly wishes they could take him with them.
...crap, I'm seriously wondering about the life story and feelings of a hunk of glass. I need to take up a more productive hobby. Like smoking.
The riddle happened to be "Beneath the queen, a secret door", by the way. It's not something The Riddler would use, but since this scene really isn't that pivotal to the plot, it'll have to do. Although I'm not sure why The Magic Mirror (does he even have a name?) couldn't just say "There's a secret door underneath the statue of the Queen's head!" in rhyme, but I guess he wanted to give the little woodland gnomes some feeling of accomplishment.
Luckily, the Dwarfelles are, despite their actions throughout this entire flick, not as stupid as they look and actually manage to solve the riddle pretty quickly. Now if only they used that brand of logic earlier when Shadow Man was trying to help them earlier with the wolves.
Oh, and there's a very awkward scene where Blossom flirts with the Magic Mirror in her Zsa Zsa Gabor voice and actually kisses him for being so nice to the Dwarfelles. Now, normally this wouldn't be a big scene at all, and I would've only noted it with a simple "Gross" before continuing to write a huge paragraph on Magic Mirror's sex life, but consider the fact that Blossom really hasn't done anything else in this movie. Sunburn's big scene was to open up the drawbridge, Thunderella gets her own theme song, and Blossom's shining moment is when she makes out with a sentient piece of furniture. That's just depressing. To make this scene even worse, note the placement of Blossom's lips when she kisses him. Now it's depressing and gross all at the same time.
Although, lip service aside, it would've been an incredibly funny scene if Blossom kissed him and suddenly the Magic Mirror changed into a handsome prince himself, on account of True Love's First Kiss breaking a spell that the Magic Mirror just plain forgot about after all of these years.
Meanwhile, Snow White is being dragged around by "The Prince", who, instead of taking them home, decides to take them to a mysterious structure built into the castle while walking on pathways that look extremely unsafe and impractical with their lack of railings. Resembling an arena and surrounded in mysterious statues of different creatures, this place just screams either "Final Boss Battle" or "Medieval Pokemon Stadium" in terms of setup, and it seems like the exact opposite of a hiding place considering it's out in the open and is the most conspicuous building in the entire structure. And yet Snow White is not at all suspicious by this. Don't make me get an image macro with Admiral Ackbar, Snow White. God help me, I'll do it!
You gotta love Lord BadDisguise's choice of logic he force-feeds to the dumb princess in order to get her to cooperate. Since he's her beloved prince, Snow White has to trust him. Okaaay. Can't argue with that, I guess.
And is it wrong that I find The Prince hotter this way? He's now like if Groose from Skyward Sword, Gaston, and He-Man were all shoved into a teleportation pod and fused together in a hideous science experiment gone wrong, and now that horrible creation is committing crimes against modern decency with his deadly sneers.
And in case you haven't caught on that he's Lord Maliss, his eyes even glow.
Well, this is clearly the best disguise ever. He looks and acts just like the Prince and is able to come up with very compelling arguments as to why he's leading our main female lead to where the final climatic battle is going to be. I was going to sarcastically say "Snow White will never suspect a thing", but she never does. And then I felt really bad for this poor kingdom, because this woman is going to be crowned queen very soon.
But it could be worse. Lord Maliss could be dressed up as an old lady right now and trying to hand her an apple.
But then, while the audience is wondering just how stupid Snow White can get, the cartoon suddenly veers off course and takes a sharp turn for the creepy when we learn the reason why Lord Maliss hasn't killed Snow White yet, the reason he hasn't just turned into a dragon, bitten her head off, and then urinated on her decapitated, bleeding corpse as it lay twitching at his feet. Instead, he wants to be classy and he wants to display her body on a pedestal and have her corpse look out to the countryside forever. This is probably one of the plot points people actually remember from this film, because this is a surprisingly decent twist. Most of the Disney villains just want the main heroes dead. They never want to turn their foes' dead bodies into decoration. Lord Maliss is a real trendsetter.
But despite that, I still have a question for Mr. Maliss. Lord Maliss, you were a dragon earlier. Hell, that's why Snow White is at the castle right now. So why the hell didn't you just drop her off near here? Was the notion of playing with her mind just too much to resist? I guess you can say that making Snow White hate the one person she loves the most right before you kill her makes the revenge plot all the sweeter, but sometimes you need to go for the more direct approach.
Snow White's reaction to this is...very apt, to say the least.
That's when Lord Maliss belts some fantastic evil laughter, turns back to his original form, and says "You'll never see your prince agaaaaaaaaaain!" while breaking out into a huge, villainous grin like he just had an evilgasm. Hell freaking yes. Lord Maliss, never stop being awesome. I don't care if you have no idea how to act in a subtle fashion; it's clearly obvious that both you and your voice-actor are enjoying every minute of your job. And for that, Lord Maliss deserves a spot in the pantheon of great villains, alongside Shredder, Cobra Commander, and Professor Coldheart.
And then, the scariest thing in the entire damn film shows up. See that cloak Lord SubtleActing is holding? See that statue that resembles that two-headed bird monster from the opening scene? Now, Lord Maliss isn't just going to kill Snow White and have her corpse slowly putrefy on that neat little marble pedestal he bought from the home shopping network, nor is he going to try to find a taxidermist that's willing to work with a human body. Instead, Lord Maliss has, in his possession, a cloak that can turn people into stone.
And now, a moment of silence for the weird horned bird with two heads. The fact that a minion basically dies off-screen is rather unnerving if you dwell on it for too long, especially when you realize that the scene where the Dwarfelles were outsmarting the monsters through slapstick had a lot less monster designs in it than the opening scene with the party. Lord Maliss was basically killing creatures with his cloak of evil just for the hell of it. Goddamn.
Now, you might to be thinking to yourself. That isn't very scary. The Petrify status effect can be easily solved with the right spell. If you're thinking that, you don't understand the nature of this thing, because what makes the cloak scary is when it lands on a random lizard, we learn that the process is not instantaneous or painless. Instead, the poor creature screams in agony while we get to hear a bunch of lovely fleshy and bone-cracking sound effects as the animal slowly fossilizes. Holy crap.
This is the sort of thing that sticks with a little kid long after the movie is finished. I remember seeing this film for the first time and being unable to completely cover myself with certain blankets for weeks, in fear that one of the red blankets in our house would be my family's special petrification blanket and I'd turn into a statue too. Filmation, why do you hate children so much?
Luckily, Shadow Man is there to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and he manages to show up before the Dwarfelles do. I guess the reason why he didn't team up with them is because he figured they would only slow him down. I have to say, nothing is more satisfying than seeing the best character in the entire movie descend upon the scene like a deformed little ninja and then use his walking cane as a weapon against Lord Hammy, totally taking the scenery-chewing villain by surprise. Shadow Man for SSB4.
Now, one of the main reasons I spoiled the big "Shadow Man is the Prince" reveal is so that I have more time to talk about how this punishment is really quite a stupid idea. Clearly the best way to get rid of one of your greatest enemies is to turn him into something that can still fight back, because nothing's better than giving your enemies even more reasons to hate you!
There is great moment where, after Lord Maliss uses magic to successfully fight back and temporarily stun the only other character in the movie as awesome as he is, Snow White then runs up to Severus Snape and actually starts pounding her fists into his chest while he stands there, unsure whether to find this amusing or insulting. Mewtwo Strikes Back totally stole this scene and the "major character(s) turning into stone and then being revived by the power of love" scene that's going to inevitably come up later. I just know it.
As expected, Dick Dastardly uses the really stupid princess's close proximity to his advantage, grabs her, and starts hauling her ass over to the marble podium.
...well. That was smart, Snow White. I hope you're proud of yourself.
Meanwhile, Shadow Man tries once again to fight the green-skinned demon-man off, but he's powerless to stop him, because all he's armed is a stick while Lord Maliss has the power of Satan, laser eyes, and heavy metal rock music at his side. Lord Maliss is kind of OP when you really think about it. He's like that dick who shows up to your Dungeons and Dragons session with his majestic Half-Dragon-Half-Half-Elf Paladin and starts godmodding all over the place until the other players quit out of frustration.
Now, before you think that this is the reason why Lord Maliss cursed the prince, that this spell severely weakened someone who could just run him through with a magic sword or something, remember that the Prince's ass was soundly handed to him at the very beginning by this very same character. The only difference here was that this time, Shadow Man was able to get some hits in. So if anything, Prince NoName is more powerful in this form. Some "special fate", eh Lord Maliss?
Despite the fact that Lord Maliss clearly has the advantage and is inches away from killing him, that doesn't stop our loveable little goblinbeast from giving off an epic death glare to end all death glares. Now I really wish Shadow Man was in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. It's really hard saying this character looks like Orko when he's so much cooler than Orko and could probably steal Orko's lunch money without even breaking a sweat.
Then, what happens next is a very, very painful to watch scene where Lord Maliss slowly tortures Shadow Man with his lasers (and I realize I keep writing the word lasers, but seriously, what else would you call them?). I say "painful" because, while normally this man would just blast people with his eyes and be done with it, this time, Lord Maliss has to make Shadow Man slooooowly levitate backwards through the air while fittingly medieval music plays in the background. I guess this is how they performed laser eye surgery during the dark ages. Otherwise I see no other reason why this scene is so long, other than to reinforce the whole "Filmation hates children" argument I had earlier.
I also like how if you look at these last couple of screenshots, Happily Ever After looks like an entirely different movie from the previous parts. Remember when Mother Nature making literal catfish while some ugly sunflower made fun of her, or when Muddy was smearing mud underneath her armpits? Neither do I.
And then, Shadow Man dies. In a pretty epic fashion, might I add, because from the looks of it, Lord Maliss's eyebeams basically consumed him from the inside out. I bet you can see why I preferred this movie to the Disney classic as a young child despite the frightening imagery and the cloak of nightmares.
But still, I can't help but wonder why didn't Lord Maliss do that in any other part of the movie. To kill Scowl, he has to set up an elaborate pulley system that leads to a cauldron and doesn't even stick around to see his death trap do the job, but to kill Shadow Man, he uses his magic powers and he's done. Why the hell didn't he do this to Scowl? It would've been an awesome subversion to have a smoking evil minion sidekick constantly berated by some cutesy bat minion about how he really needs to quit smoking, looking like we're going to get this moral on how smoking is bad for you...and then Lord Maliss nukes his insides. As an added bonus, the heat from the lasers could even make Scowl's cigar light up.
But I got off-topic. This movie seems to realize how awesome this death is, because right when Shadow Man crashes like a lifeless sack of meat to the ground, lightning flashes. You can almost make a drinking game out of the lightning in this movie, because it's that special cinematic type of dramatic lightning that has to illuminate things just at the right moment.
With Shadow Man gone and Snow White being about as useful in combat as, well, your typical Disney princess, Lord Maliss is about ready to turn Snow White into stone.
Luckily for Snow White, Maliss is the kind of villain who has to relish in his enemies' suffering, because instead of just tossing the cloak on her and then spending the rest of his weekend crashed out in front of the couch and watching the Super Bowl through that magic mirror while surrounded in the statues of frat boys who couldn't beat him in various drinking games, he has to take his sweetass time and leisurely stroll towards her while he chats delightfully about what a great statue she'll make. To be fair, at this point in time, you're kind of expected Lord Maliss to take the cliche route. It's in his blood.
But then, the Dwarfelles to the rescue!
Now, normally when the Dwarfelles are in the scene, I am filled with nothing but utter loathing and contempt for the nasty little fairies who can't do anything besides take time out of the movie that could've been devoted to the Shadow Man, but this is different. It looks like the path between the magic mirror and this giant stone arena was filled with Elixirs of Badassery +50 because buggering hell, look at them! Even Marina and Moonbeam look fierce! Too bad the movie's almost over or else this would've totally redeemed all of them in my eyes.
So they fight, and boy is it awkward to watch, because instead of, oh I don't know, using their goddamn powers, the dwarfs do things like pulling on Lord Maliss's hair, punching him in the face, and, in Blossom's case, sticking his fingers in her mouth and biting down. I'm not sure how this is supposed to defeat a man who can turn into a dragon and shoot lasers out of his eyes, ladies.
To make this even worse, they had a whole arena to give them enough room to summon giant floods or earthquakes or scorching sunbeams or something. They have no excuse.
But it turns out that not all of the dwarfs are raging imbeciles. While the six less-important Dwarfelles are filling the air with a weird combination of badassery and fail, Thunderella approaches Snow White and starts to untie her.
And, since everyone else that's ever talked about this movie pointed this out, I might as well point it out too. When the Dwarfelles tackle Lord Maliss to the ground (which sounds like the premise for a Lord of the Rings-themed porno), Snow White's hand actually temporarily becomes untied just so she can put them against her face and make an "oh!" face. What makes this goof sad is that I've watched this film religiously for most of my childhood, and I never discovered this mistake until recently. At this point in the film, the quality kind of lulls you into a placid form of complacency so little continuity errors such as those barely even affect you, not when the cartoon is actually being exciting instead of having Scowl and Batso demonstrate the many possible ways you can shove the word "bad" into everyday conversation.
As expected, Lord Maliss grows tired of having little dwarfs stick his body parts in their disease-ridden mouths so he whips out his cloak and ends up fossilizing them. I have to say, as heartbreaking as this all is (although in reality, I was cheering and pumping my fists in the air when I saw that Moonbeam died), the Dwarfelles probably could've avoided this if they didn't all bunch up together and cringe in fear while the cloak was slowly falling towards them. They could've tried, oh, you know, getting out of the way? Even if they didn't know the cloak was going to turn them into stone, the villain throwing a random piece of cloth at you is bound to do something terrible!
I just want to point out the Muddy statue. Muddy, spreading your legs and making a silly face usually reserved for Class Picture Day isn't the most dignified pose you could make while you're being turned to stone.What, were you intending to spite Lord Maliss with your last breath by making sure he can never put you out on his front lawn without getting strange comments from his neighbors? What the hell?
Lord Maliss is delighted that he killed the characters that have more merchandise than he does. Filled with raw hubris and victory disease, he then croons "Seven new statues I haven't even counted on" with an emphasis on count. See, while Lord Maliss did take all of the right transmogrification and eyebeam classes while he was in high school, he always failed in math. Which is evidenced by the fact that there are clearly six statues.
You know what this means. Cinematic payoff for that one song you probably forgot about.
Luckily, this cinematic payoff is deeply satisfying because, while Lord Maliss has his back turned and about ready to kill Snow White, she jumps out from behind the pillar she was hiding behind, points her finger at Malcolm McDowell, and calls upon the Dark Side of the Force. This is such a badass scene (and I realize I'm overusing the word "badass" at this point), mostly because Thunderella's actually using her powers. I cannot stress this enough. The other dwarfs should learn from Thunderella, or at least if they weren't lawn ornaments right now, they could.
...are the rockenized victims of the cloak aware of their surroundings? Because that makes those statues in the beginning so much worse if that's true.
But even that's not as badass as what finally kills Lord Maliss. Snow White, her hair now messy and her eyes now alight with spiritual anger, yanks the villain's cloak from his hands and honest to god jumps on him while using the cloak herself. For all the being kidnapped, the whining about her beloved prince, the passing out, and the not seeing through obvious magic illusions Snow White's been doing in this entire film, this one scene actually manages to redeem her completely in my eyes. Girl power!
And now that I think about it, this film actually becomes way better if you just skip to the last ten minutes of the film. Filmation, instead of spreading the awesomesauce evenly through their production, just jammed all of the really kickass scenes in the very end. Talk about uneven quality.
And, to top that scene of epic with an extra helping of epic with a scoop of awesomesauce, Lord Maliss has a death scene as melodramatic as his acting. He doesn't just turn into a statue instantly like all of his victims. No, no, no, that would be too subtle for Lord Maliss. Instead, he screams inhumanly, transforms into a dragon, sets the cloak on fire, screams in pain while lightning keeps on striking his face, shapeshifts his dragon head back to normal, and then turns into a statue. This is like if someone took a band like Metallica and tried to turn the very essence of their music into an animated film, and somehow got confused and added scenes with tiny female dwarfs and tried to market it to young children.
...wait a second. They didn't have the dragon in the climatic battle! Forget the praise I just heaped on this movie; now I'm pissed that I didn't get to see the Shadow Man use his walking stick as a weapon while fighting off a giant wyvern.
So Lord Maliss is defeated and the Dwarfelles are back to normal (although it's not explained how they returned to normal), but Shadow Man is still dead from lasers. While gathering the poor little guy and his dumpy potato sack of a body up in her arms, Snow White then says "I cared for him as dearly as the prince" and "Now I lost them both" without noting the irony of this situation. I also love how Snow White is basically saying that she cared for a man, one that's so ugly that its best left to the imagination and she barely knew a day, as much as her fiance. Snow's got some pretty low standards.
Now is also a good time to point out that while the Dwarfelles were restored back to normal, none of the other statues were. Two-headed bird monster is going to remain a statue forever. This fact does nothing but depress me.
Basically all Part 3 did, because it honestly didn't have very many things happen in it compared to the first two parts I did, was reinforce what I already knew about this cartoon; that they're not even going to try to make any of these have any sort of logic, nor are they going to have this be at all similar to the fairy tale this is based on, beyond having seven dwarfs and a character named Snow White. But since this cartoon has just introduced Shadow Man and made him a major player in this production, and anything Shadow Man does (except for getting his foot trapped underneath a rock) is going to be awesome, I'm going to allow this.
And speaking of the Shadow Man, what a better way to start this post than to talk about the most famous scene in the entire movie, the one that made everyone with two X-chromosomes go "D'awwww..." and draw shipping art involving him. If you've seen this movie and happened to be a girl, chances are, this is what left an impact. Ignoring the frightening, mind-scarring imagery involving dead queens of course.
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| Note the tree branch and the rocks make a broken heart. Actual subtlety in a Filmation cartoon? |
And, since there won't be a Moonbeam or a Marina to foul up the air with their auras of wasted potential, what follows is a surprisingly tender moment between Snow White and the Shadow Man as she thanks him for everything he's done. She gives him what is basically a ten page term paper on how she knew he was trying to protect them back at the cave and how grateful she is to have such a great friend with creepy fingernails and grimy hobo clothes. And, while she's thanking him, Shadow
I also have to say that the scene where the Shadow Man listens to Snow White ramble on about how he's been watching over her has some surprisingly good animation while the malformed little goblin turns in space. It's probably rotoscoped (Snow White sometimes slips into it, which is ironic because that's what her Disney counterpart is known for) but it's still surprising to see honest to god good animation in this film.
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| "Seriously, just what the hell are you? Goblin? Boggart? Dryad? Kobold? Come on, level with me here!" |
So while she travels back to camp, she offers for the Shadow Man to come with them and help them on their magnificent quest of killing an overdramatic man in a bad Renn Faire getup. At first, he follows, until he spots a lake and stops in his tracks, as if alarmed by his own reflection. I know this is setting up the overused "hideous monster sees his reflection and then has major feelings of angst about it" scene, but I can't help but wonder how Shadow Man is not aware of how bad he looks when he clearly designed his clothing very carefully so that no one can see him! Unless someone else dressed him, but that just raises further questions.
Note the backgrounds, by the way. Avant-garde style monochromatic painting is not something that can be easily pulled off, especially when it comes to low-budget animated films that inexplicably got a theatrical release. There is such a thing as too much blue, Lord Maliss! Your Realm of Doom could use a little complementary colors. Or even some purples. Something!
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| "Ooh, I just spotted dinner!" |
As you can tell, this scene is a very glaringly obvious, "Las Vegas casino sign with flashing lights and a half-naked lady" hint as to what happened with the prince. Remember when, about several months ago due to me being lazy and taking my sweet time with these blog posts, Lord Maliss shot the prince with an eye laser that was supposed to do something very special? Yeah, I didn't want to give this away, but since I figured this out at the age of five from this scene I might as well say it. The Shadow Man is the prince. That's why he's protecting Snow White. This was Lord Maliss's punishment. If you were spoiled by this, tough crap, you should've figured this out by now.
I still like this scene, with its oddly better-than-the-rest-of-the-movie animation and facial expressions. I like to imagine that Filmation only had enough room on their budget for one good animator since crappy ones are easier to pay, and they figured the good animator could deal with Shadow Man's big scene. Which is ironic because he's the one character who people won't notice if he's off-model on account of how butt-ugly he is.
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| A puddle killed his parents. |
Also, Snow White's face will never not be funny to me. Lord Maliss's appearance and then reuse of the same eye laser zapping animation as when he attacked the prince is so surprising that Snow White has decided to bug out her eyes and shove almost all of her fingers into her mouth. Everyone copes with stressful situations differently, I guess.
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| Snow White's reaction to the box office returns for this movie. |
...totally naming my death metal band that, by the way.
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| Shadow Man's reaction to the fact that Super Mario Bros. had a better opening weekend than this movie. |
But ignoring Critterina leaving this world (my condolences to that giant rabbit that appeared once during Thunderella's song and never again), why isn't Shadow Man helping them? They have a common enemy and a common goal, and chances are they'll be radically more successful if they work together. Plus, with Shadow Man's amazing ability to push things over, nothing can stop them!
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| "Muddy, Critterina's stopped breathing." |
"I'm about to be owl stew and he's worried about smoking."
Okay, points for an decent line with decent line delivery. It's sad that something as simple as this made me giggle, but then again, it's Ed Asner. He's always amazing.
And Batso's such a dick if he's seriously treating this whole situation like a joke and cracking more bad jokes even when Scowl's about to die. Does he not see the rope, the cauldron of lethal boiling soup, and the fire slowly cutting the rope? Seriously, Batso? This isn't adorable, it's obnoxious!
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| "I see you're hanging out, Scowl. You also look a little steamed that you're tied up at the moment. You could even say you're at the end of your rope..." "Why can't this rope break any faster!?" |
I honestly am not at all surprised that Scowl lived, considering the very nature of that booby trap gives him an 100% chance of survival since Lord Maliss just walked away, but in fairness to the cartoon, do you really think Filmation would totally show an owl dying from scalding water onscreen when they're trying to compete with Disney with a pale imitation of one of their films? Not when Scowl has yet to fulfill his role on providing the cartoon with a moral involving smoking! Even though, logically, you can just as easily make a Saturday Morning-style moral on his pride (he sung an entire song on how bad he is) or his constant insistence on helping his superiors when it's obvious his help is going to bring productivity down.
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| "Hoo boy, what did I do last night?" |
Nah, I'm just kidding. Scowl was going to leave, but then he saw the Dwarfelles approach the castle and now he's seriously going to try one last time to please Lord Maliss even though his boss has just tried to boil him to death. Gotta admire someone with that much lethal persistence.
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| "Yes! I'll try once more to appease the horrifying monster of a man who previously tried to kill me! Brilliant!" |
...no offense guys, but if Lord Maliss wanted Dwarfelles, he can just morph into that badass dragon/wyvern/horrid bird thing. Just sayin'.
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| Ladies and gentlemen, direct your attention to Blossom's face. |
I'm not sure what the hell is up with the animation for this last act, but the characters get off-model a lot more often, but with the added bonus of having slightly smoother if a lot more cartoony animation. Seriously, after the scene with the Shadow Man at the lake, it's like the movie is handled by an entirely different studio. One that likes to animate deformed Dwarfelles and satanic owls.
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| "You imbecile! That's not an 'Adequate Pipe'. It's an AQUEDUCT PIPE!" |
Or, to put this in different words, Scowl totally doomed his master's plan and is the reason why the day ends up getting saved in the end, all because he couldn't resist taking one final stab at being bad. And this hasn't been the only time Scowl's accidentally prevented Lord Maliss from killing Snow White. Good job, Scowl!
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| All she needs is a deep fat fryer and she'll be eating well tonight. |
This scene also gets pretty depressing once you realize that this was supposedly the scene that shows off exactly how strong Lord Maliss's army of mutant creatures are. This is the only line of work these creatures are capable of getting in this kingdom (because I really doubt a giant crocodile monster can receive a blacksmith apprenticeship) and they absolutely suck at their job. All they wanted was the approval of a tyrant with knee-high boots! Now all they can do now is wait for some band of heroes to slay them in a random encounter and loot their bodies for gil and rare item drops.
Although this is a good explanation why Lord Maliss didn't send any of these mutants after Snow White earlier. It's like he realized his sister left him some pretty pisspoor evil minions and said "To hell with it, I'm using wolves with ridiculous rhino horns".
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| I swear I've seen that pink monster in Felix the Cat: The Movie... |
...by fainting while being carried off in the air by a random dragon and it's not really explained why Lord Maliss would just let his prisoners roam around his castle without being locked up or heavily guarded and this is totally a trap, isn't it.
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| The Prince is admiring the penis he drew on her forehead with permanent marker. |
The Prince (who, spoiler alert, isn't really the prince) is all kinds of amazing in this scene, because nothing's funnier than seeing the object of Snow White's affections treating her pretty rudely and just hauling her around like a sack of company-destroying potatoes. Unlike the previous scene with the Prince in them where all he exhibited was love for his future wife and later righteous fury over a wyvern hauling his bride away, this Prince acts like the mere act of breathing the same air as Snow White is a laborious chore not worth his time, and man does his face reflect that.
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| "Come on, you dumb broad. Get your ditzy ass up so that we can get this stupid wedding over with." |
As you can probably guess, a certain dragon-y being that loves chewing the scenery and wearing pink is trying his hand at a different kind of spell. One that, in my opinion, seems like such a big waste of everyone's time because if he wanted to transport Snow White somewhere, all he has to do is whip out his eyebeams. I guess it's kind of a clever allusion to how the Wicked Queen fooled Ms. White into eating an apple laced with rat poison by using a disguise, but then that brings up the question as to why Lord Maliss isn't even trying to pretend like he's the Prince here. It's a good thing Snow White is so consumed by the power of One True Love to notice any bizarre behavioral changes in her significant other or else this plan never would've worked.
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| "Damn right I'm awesome." |
Course, I doubt Lord Maliss morphing into the prince ever crossed her mind because he can just turn into a dragon and kill her that way. And yes, I know I've brought up the dragon argument more than once while covering this movie, but it really pokes a hole in every single plot Lord Maliss conceives. Except for the ones that involve turning into a dragon, of course. Because he can turn into a dragon.
Right after Snow White and Prince Totally-Not-The-Bad-Guy enter the passageway, the Dwarfelles burst into the room, propelled by their own uselessness. The passageway had already shut, but luckily, it turns out The Mirror randomly decided to be a good guy at the last moment and gives them, in riddle, a hint to the secret door. You never hear a reason as to why he wants to help the creatures that he was previously spying on, but to be fair, Lord Maliss was kind of prick to this character for the entire movie. His sudden betrayal isn't totally unfounded.
Although I'm not sure how this benefits the Magic Mirror. Either way, he's going to be stuck on that wall for the rest of his life, doomed to collect dust and mouse droppings for eons until some earthquake or clumsy rat monster housemaid finally knocks him over and he shatters. He doesn't seem to mind his sedentary life too badly (he never complains about it anyway), but considering he has free will and can make decisions of his own, you can't help but wonder if he's showing kindness to these dwarfs because he secretly wishes they could take him with them.
...crap, I'm seriously wondering about the life story and feelings of a hunk of glass. I need to take up a more productive hobby. Like smoking.
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| "Hello, laaaaadies..." |
Luckily, the Dwarfelles are, despite their actions throughout this entire flick, not as stupid as they look and actually manage to solve the riddle pretty quickly. Now if only they used that brand of logic earlier when Shadow Man was trying to help them earlier with the wolves.
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| "I wonder how much I can get for this thing on eBay?" |
Although, lip service aside, it would've been an incredibly funny scene if Blossom kissed him and suddenly the Magic Mirror changed into a handsome prince himself, on account of True Love's First Kiss breaking a spell that the Magic Mirror just plain forgot about after all of these years.
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| The most action he's had in years. |
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| So why did the Wicked Queen have this building in her castle...? |
And is it wrong that I find The Prince hotter this way? He's now like if Groose from Skyward Sword, Gaston, and He-Man were all shoved into a teleportation pod and fused together in a hideous science experiment gone wrong, and now that horrible creation is committing crimes against modern decency with his deadly sneers.
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| "When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs, every morning to help me get large." |
Well, this is clearly the best disguise ever. He looks and acts just like the Prince and is able to come up with very compelling arguments as to why he's leading our main female lead to where the final climatic battle is going to be. I was going to sarcastically say "Snow White will never suspect a thing", but she never does. And then I felt really bad for this poor kingdom, because this woman is going to be crowned queen very soon.
But it could be worse. Lord Maliss could be dressed up as an old lady right now and trying to hand her an apple.
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| Although, considering Lord Maliss, he could totally pull the old lady look off. |
But despite that, I still have a question for Mr. Maliss. Lord Maliss, you were a dragon earlier. Hell, that's why Snow White is at the castle right now. So why the hell didn't you just drop her off near here? Was the notion of playing with her mind just too much to resist? I guess you can say that making Snow White hate the one person she loves the most right before you kill her makes the revenge plot all the sweeter, but sometimes you need to go for the more direct approach.
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| I'm really sad that Lord Maliss didn't use a glass coffin because that would've been awesome. |
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| D8 |
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| The biggest disappointment I have involving this film is the fact that Lord Maliss never got to sing a villain song. |
And now, a moment of silence for the weird horned bird with two heads. The fact that a minion basically dies off-screen is rather unnerving if you dwell on it for too long, especially when you realize that the scene where the Dwarfelles were outsmarting the monsters through slapstick had a lot less monster designs in it than the opening scene with the party. Lord Maliss was basically killing creatures with his cloak of evil just for the hell of it. Goddamn.
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| Don't ask where he got the cloak; he probably got it the same place where he learned how to turn into a dragon. |
This is the sort of thing that sticks with a little kid long after the movie is finished. I remember seeing this film for the first time and being unable to completely cover myself with certain blankets for weeks, in fear that one of the red blankets in our house would be my family's special petrification blanket and I'd turn into a statue too. Filmation, why do you hate children so much?
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| And it was that lizard's last day until retirement too. |
Now, one of the main reasons I spoiled the big "Shadow Man is the Prince" reveal is so that I have more time to talk about how this punishment is really quite a stupid idea. Clearly the best way to get rid of one of your greatest enemies is to turn him into something that can still fight back, because nothing's better than giving your enemies even more reasons to hate you!
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| How Shadow Man performs the Heimlich Maneuver. |
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| "Die!" |
...well. That was smart, Snow White. I hope you're proud of yourself.
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| "It's all a part of my plan to lure him into a false sense of security!" |
Now, before you think that this is the reason why Lord Maliss cursed the prince, that this spell severely weakened someone who could just run him through with a magic sword or something, remember that the Prince's ass was soundly handed to him at the very beginning by this very same character. The only difference here was that this time, Shadow Man was able to get some hits in. So if anything, Prince NoName is more powerful in this form. Some "special fate", eh Lord Maliss?
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| "Okay, what was I thinking when I made this curse?" |
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| Shadow Man sees what you did there. |
I also like how if you look at these last couple of screenshots, Happily Ever After looks like an entirely different movie from the previous parts. Remember when Mother Nature making literal catfish while some ugly sunflower made fun of her, or when Muddy was smearing mud underneath her armpits? Neither do I.
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| Lord Maliss casts Staring Contest at Shadow Man. Shadow Man suffers 300000 Fire damage from Lord Maliss's Staring Contest. (1200 resisted) |
But still, I can't help but wonder why didn't Lord Maliss do that in any other part of the movie. To kill Scowl, he has to set up an elaborate pulley system that leads to a cauldron and doesn't even stick around to see his death trap do the job, but to kill Shadow Man, he uses his magic powers and he's done. Why the hell didn't he do this to Scowl? It would've been an awesome subversion to have a smoking evil minion sidekick constantly berated by some cutesy bat minion about how he really needs to quit smoking, looking like we're going to get this moral on how smoking is bad for you...and then Lord Maliss nukes his insides. As an added bonus, the heat from the lasers could even make Scowl's cigar light up.
But I got off-topic. This movie seems to realize how awesome this death is, because right when Shadow Man crashes like a lifeless sack of meat to the ground, lightning flashes. You can almost make a drinking game out of the lightning in this movie, because it's that special cinematic type of dramatic lightning that has to illuminate things just at the right moment.
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| Lasers and lightning? Most epic death ever. |
Luckily for Snow White, Maliss is the kind of villain who has to relish in his enemies' suffering, because instead of just tossing the cloak on her and then spending the rest of his weekend crashed out in front of the couch and watching the Super Bowl through that magic mirror while surrounded in the statues of frat boys who couldn't beat him in various drinking games, he has to take his sweetass time and leisurely stroll towards her while he chats delightfully about what a great statue she'll make. To be fair, at this point in time, you're kind of expected Lord Maliss to take the cliche route. It's in his blood.
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| In case you're wondering what era this movie is made, just look at Snow White's hair. Good god. |
Now, normally when the Dwarfelles are in the scene, I am filled with nothing but utter loathing and contempt for the nasty little fairies who can't do anything besides take time out of the movie that could've been devoted to the Shadow Man, but this is different. It looks like the path between the magic mirror and this giant stone arena was filled with Elixirs of Badassery +50 because buggering hell, look at them! Even Marina and Moonbeam look fierce! Too bad the movie's almost over or else this would've totally redeemed all of them in my eyes.
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| "Eat soft, cuddly, legally-distinct-from-Disney-copyrighted-properties death, punk!" |
To make this even worse, they had a whole arena to give them enough room to summon giant floods or earthquakes or scorching sunbeams or something. They have no excuse.
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| Oh that Blossom. She'll put her mouth on anything. |
And, since everyone else that's ever talked about this movie pointed this out, I might as well point it out too. When the Dwarfelles tackle Lord Maliss to the ground (which sounds like the premise for a Lord of the Rings-themed porno), Snow White's hand actually temporarily becomes untied just so she can put them against her face and make an "oh!" face. What makes this goof sad is that I've watched this film religiously for most of my childhood, and I never discovered this mistake until recently. At this point in the film, the quality kind of lulls you into a placid form of complacency so little continuity errors such as those barely even affect you, not when the cartoon is actually being exciting instead of having Scowl and Batso demonstrate the many possible ways you can shove the word "bad" into everyday conversation.
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| (Caption intentionally left blank on account I don't want my blog on a sex offender registry.) |
I just want to point out the Muddy statue. Muddy, spreading your legs and making a silly face usually reserved for Class Picture Day isn't the most dignified pose you could make while you're being turned to stone.What, were you intending to spite Lord Maliss with your last breath by making sure he can never put you out on his front lawn without getting strange comments from his neighbors? What the hell?
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| Now they can star in Travelocity commercials. |
You know what this means. Cinematic payoff for that one song you probably forgot about.
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| Calvin likes to crossdress. |
...are the rockenized victims of the cloak aware of their surroundings? Because that makes those statues in the beginning so much worse if that's true.
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| Thunderella is killing off Mace Windu, I see. |
And now that I think about it, this film actually becomes way better if you just skip to the last ten minutes of the film. Filmation, instead of spreading the awesomesauce evenly through their production, just jammed all of the really kickass scenes in the very end. Talk about uneven quality.
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| And yet the Snow White with all the merchandise is the one who's best known for singing songs to a wishing well, baking a pie and eating a poisonous apple. |
...wait a second. They didn't have the dragon in the climatic battle! Forget the praise I just heaped on this movie; now I'm pissed that I didn't get to see the Shadow Man use his walking stick as a weapon while fighting off a giant wyvern.
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| This film should be called "Epic Death Scenes: The Movie". |
Now is also a good time to point out that while the Dwarfelles were restored back to normal, none of the other statues were. Two-headed bird monster is going to remain a statue forever. This fact does nothing but depress me.
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| Snow White and Shadow Man lovingly reenact Michelangelo's Pietà . |
And wait, "it is love that makes people the most special of all my creatures"? Uh, Mother Nature? Seriously? Animals can experience love too. Any pet owner can attest to this.
Also if people are the most special of all your creatures, does that include humanoids like dwarfs, those ogre-like minions, and...whatever the hell Shadow Man is?
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| "I'm sorry for your loss. Have some glitter to make you feel better." |
I'm also not sure why they felt the need to do this. I'm pretty sure most of the audience here has a pretty good short term memory. It's not we're sitting here going "Wait, why is Snow White sad about that random guy that appeared out of-oh, wait! She touched his head while he was trapped underneath a rock! Now I remember!" while watching this. Instead I'm wondering what scene got cut at the last moment that required them to insert this small clip show at the last minute.
This flashback also highlights a big problem. You know how Snow White said she cared for Shadow Man as deeply as the prince? Well, thanks to the clips, you suddenly become aware of the fact that, excluding the final battle and the scene where Shadow Man pushes over a tree, Snow White and Shadow Man only had two scenes where they really interacted with each other. There's was a complex, deep relationship.
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| "I'm going to miss his dirt-encrusted claws and his gruff, serial killer voice!" |
I love the "What the HELL?" face Snow White makes when this happens, by the way. The raised eyebrow is the icing on the cake for me. Pure genius.
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| "You asshole! I can't believe I actually fell for that!" |
Considering I saw this movie before I saw Beauty and the Beast, this was my huge "No, change back into your cooler form!" moment in my childhood. I remember being so angry at this revelation that I'm sure if my puny little undeveloped brain grasped the concept of petitions, I would've written one to Filmation in crayon demanding that they make a sequel where the prince turns back into the Shadow Man and then the Shadow Man continued kicking ass with Snow White and Thunderella at his side.
It doesn't help that when the prince changes back, he's somehow able to fit into Shadow Man's clothes even though Shadow Man was half as tall as the prince. Magic, I guess. Or at least really good fabric.
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| So in this movie, Orko turned into Prince Adam with the power of love. |
But no, instead, the reason she said that was so that she could say that Thunderella helped more than everyone else here. I guess that works too. Either way, Moonbeam sucks.
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| "I just want to say that only three of us were actually any useful while the rest of us were only here to take up space." |
This ending is so flowery and cutesy-wutesy that even Scowl and Batso get a happy ending, because Mother Nature is training them as apprentices! Hooray, they're good guys for some unexplained reason even though the whole point of their characters was so that they'd be bad! This makes perfect sense!
And why isn't anyone thinking of that poor Magic Mirror still bolted to the wall? He was actually nice to the Dwarfelles!
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| Okay, Mother Nature. Where the hell did you get the modern bird cage in medieval Germany? |
But then again, maybe Scowl was smoking literally the only cigar in the entire kingdom. Tobacco smoking didn't become a popular thing until the American colonies were established.
Yeah, I don't buy it either.
Plus that's not going to cure Scowl's charred, plague-coated organs that are his lungs just because he stopped, you know.
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| YA RLY. |
...so, since this entire movie was caused by the Wicked Queen having a brother, what's stopping them from making a sequel where Lord Maliss's cousin, who can change into a giant unicorn, travels to the castle and finds out that his beloved brother is dead? They can just make a whole series of these movies where Snow White keeps killing members of the Wicked Queen family tree with the help of her prince, who keeps turning into various forms of Man, like Fire Man or Mega Man (super fighting robot! Mega Man!) or Wicker Man. Come on, it'd be great!
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| And then they had sex right then and there. |
That, and the credits are really out of order. Ed Asner of all people gets a name credit before Snow freaking White, and goddamn Critterina and Marina get credited before Lord Maliss.
And that was Happily Ever After. I need to take a shower now to wash all of this 80's out of my hair.
The Morals of this Movie
*If you have a cape that can turn people into stone and the ability to transform into a dragon, use these abilities as often as possible.
*The best way to invite your best friends to a wedding is to ride around through uncharted wilderness without anything protecting your soft, fragile human body from terrifying dragon monsters.
*Having moonbeam power is about as helpful as having no powers at all.
*If you're going to curse somebody, turn them into something that's worse than their previous form.
Final Verdict
This movie is going to get some special princess-style treatment, because this will be the first movie that gets the List-styled Final Verdict as opposed to the giant paragraphs I've been doing. Hopefully this will make these final verdicts easier to write, because recently, final verdicts have become the part in the review I dread because I felt like I kept repeating myself regardless of which cartoon I was talking about.
That being said...
The Good
*This is a very likeable version of Snow White, especially when compared to the Disney Snow White. I'm not saying this to mock the Disney version, but I always did find that Snow White as a character kind of bland. This one, while kind of cliche with her use of girl power, was really fun to watch and had a more active role in the story and managed to beat the main villain without dying.
*Lord Maliss was fun. Melodramatic, over-the-top, unable to speak in an indoor voice...he's everything you could wish for in a hammy Filmation villain. Malcolm McDowell was clearly enjoying himself because every sentence Maliss speaks is like this man is having an orgasm on how awesome he is.
*Shadow Man. He's great, all of his scenes are great, and it's great to have a character that can't speak very well and looks like a monster actually be a good guy. And considering he's often the most-liked character in the movie (besides Maliss and oddly Critterina), I'm not the only one who thinks this.
*The final act. Holy hell, the final battle is awesome. After all of those sugarcoated moments of the Dwarfelles, it's nice to see a villain fight in a way that's actually really scary. He uses eye lasers, he uses that cloak; Lord Maliss clearly showed that he was not someone to take lightly.
*Backgrounds and music were decent leaning on pretty good. Not Disney-level standard, but I will be the first to admit that I used some of the backgrounds as desktop wallpapers while writing this and that I have Love is the Reason on my iPod. Don't judge meeeeee!
The Bad
*The Dwarfelles. I know it's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but come on, they were just useless half the time! I'm sorry, but if there are characters who only exist so that there are seven in a particular group, then they're not very well-written characters.The ones you end up liking are usually Muddy, Thunderella, Critterina, or Sunburn just because they actually have an active enough role that they have a personality. I kept harping on Moonbeam a lot, I know, but imagine watching a movie where you know this character exists but she's not doing anything! Her power's the freaking night and half the movie takes place at night! Freaking hell, Moonbeam!
*Scowl and Batso's scenes. I honestly tried to like these two. I really did. They're voiced by two incredibly talented people. But oh god, the bad jokes were like nails on a chalkboard. Scowl was definitely the stronger character out of the duo, but that's like saying that Bobby is the strongest character out of the Street Sharks. I think if you cut them from the movie, the movie would've actually been a stronger film.
*Lord Maliss's schemes. It was clear, this man was just making crap up as he went along. "I know, I'll mutate the prince! No wait, rhino wolves! No wait, magic cloak!" Geez, Lord Maliss. Use your stupid dragon spell and start eating people!
*The celebrity voices are not taken to their full advantage. Minor complaint, but come on, they took the time to hire Zsa Zsa Gabor and she had just a bit part.
*They reuse animation a lot more than they should've. Remember the chase scene? I certainly do.
The Final Decision
This is how I see Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Filmation's Happily Ever After. The Disney movie is artistically brilliant, is well-written, and is one of the greatest examples of animation to ever exist. It is clearly the superior film.
However, Happily Ever After is pure dumb fun. I can honestly say that I've only sat through Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a couple times in my life, and most of those times were in college when I could better appreciate the artistic values of the movie. Happily Ever After, on the other hand, I always enjoy, and that's because that the flaws aren't enough for me to hate the movie. In fact, some of the flaws, like the overdramatic villain, only enhance the film. It's hard for me to say this since in a way, I'm basically defending a really bad knockoff of a Disney product that just has tacked on things like dragons, lasers, and Ed Asner, but I loved all of this. This was highly entertaining to watch (probably because my brain is easily distracted by shiny objects like badass dragon transformations) and there's a very good reason why I own this DVD.
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| The reason I own this DVD: because it contained a scene where Snow White backhands Lord Maliss in the face. |
In other words, to sum it up, this is one of those films that's fun to watch because it's so cheesy. In case you're wondering, yes, this is a hell of a lot better than Felix the Cat: The Movie, probably because the animation doesn't look like they tried to animate it with their asses. Is it a good film? Probably not. Is it a bad film? I've personally seen a lot worse. My advice, if you're in the mood for something light and cheesy and powered by 80's music, then by all means, you're going to have a fun time. Fans of the Disney classic are probably going to get overly frustrated by this.
Just remember one thing, readers. Being nice is just for saps, being good is a handicap, get to them before they get to you, and always fly in the fast lane.
