| 60 |
Variety
Peter Debruge
Colorful, crowd-pleasing toon.
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| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
Happily was begun as an old-fashioned 2-D "flat" cartoon and then switched by producer John Williams (of "Shrek") and director Paul J. Bolger to 3-D during production. The style finally is an uncomfortable amalgam of both.
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| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Alex Chun
Putting a spin on classic fairy tales is nothing new, and unfortunately that's just what the "Shrek"-lite animated feature Happily N'Ever After brings to the big screen.
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| 50 |
TV Guide
In all, it's a peculiar mishmash, simultaneously bland and suggestive.
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| 50 |
New York Daily News
While the cast members, Dick and Prinze in particular, have fun with Robert Moreland's sassy script, the exaggerated, unappealing animation seems to belong to another movie altogether.
|
| 50 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
After the first hour or so of strained puns and wisecracks, you start feeling that the sooner the ending comes, the happier it will be.
|
| 50 |
ReelViews
This movie is the worst kind of offender: it thinks its funny and clever, but it is neither. The filmmakers have mistaken banality for wit and silliness for humor, and that doesn't begin to address how visually clunky this motion picture is.
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| 42 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Even Eddie Murphy's endless hyper "Shrek" vamping is more entertaining.
|
| 40 |
Empire
Staff (Not credited)
Shrek this ain't. A lacklustre effort hampered by limp dialogue and lazy plotting.
|
| 38 |
USA Today
Who would have thought an animated comedy satirizing the predictable nature of fairy tales could be so grim?
|
| 30 |
Wall Street Journal
N'ever was an apostrophe so misplaced, n'ever was the prospect of good cheer so perversely defeated.
|
| 30 |
The New York Times
Matt Zoller Seitz
This is another tired kidsploitation product.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
The rationale behind this unattractive animated comedy, a U.S.-German coproduction, seems to be that since it can't create a fairy-tale world of its own, it might as well riffle through many of the more familiar ones, with particular emphasis on Cinderella's, pretending to deconstruct them with postmodernist glosses, adolescent wisecracks, and a few high-tech anachronisms.
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| 30 |
Washington Post
Winds up answering the question of what "Shrek" hath wrought, and between its plastic-looking visuals and cynical attitude, the news isn't good. Lacking the genuine wit and humanism of that film and any number of forebears, this one deserves its dumpin'.
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| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
As stiff and slogging as animated films come.
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| 25 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Happily N'Ever After carjacks "Cinderella" and puts her wicked stepmother behind the wheel.
|
| 25 |
Boston Globe
A pallidly "hip" revision of classic fairy tales that would be better told straight up if anyone had the nerve. It will divert small children, but so will a brightly colored object if you twirl it.
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| 25 |
New York Post
An ugly, unfunny, headache-inducing fairy-tale spoof.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
The best that can be said of this charmless animated picture is that whether or not it ends happily -- an outcome you're unlikely to give a hoot about -- it does, happily, end.
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| 20 |
Village Voice
Ella Taylor
Director Paul J. Bolger and screenwriter Rob Moreland have drained the affectionate wit out of the Shrek franchise's satire, giving us instead a barely sketched out story line and quantities of unimaginative CGI.
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| 16 |
Entertainment Weekly
Gregory Kirschling
Stuffed with stock characters -- the vain prince, the critter sidekicks -- who adamantly stay stock.
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| 0 |
Austin Chronicle
If you really want the kids to see a colorfully cryptic meta fairy tale, be subversive and go rent 'em some Alejandro Jodorowsky. No child deserves Happily N'Ever After.
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