Deep Dive Disney: Wes Looks at Cinderella III: A Twist in Time

Welcome back to Deep Dive Disney my friends. Today, we’re looking at our last planned look at one of the direct-to-video Disney sequels. We may look at another one a little later, but we’ll save that for a special occasion. In any case, today, we’re looking at Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. And yes, for the second time we’ve skipped the second film in the series. However, from what I understand, the second film barely connects to this one anyway. There’s one or two characters from it who pop up throughout but they’re window dressing at best. As you may recall, I did not especially care for the original 1950 Cinderella, and while one would think a sequel, let alone a sequel that was released fifty-seven years after the fact no less, would be even worse, but surprisingly, I kind of enjoyed this one. It wasn’t perfect mind you, but in the humble opinion of this Disney nerd, it’s a far cry better than its 1950 predecessor. Helping this is the fact that the cast is filled with a veritable who’s who of voice acting all-stars including Jennifer Hale, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Rob Paulsen and Tress MacNeille. You know you’re in good hands when you got Spider-Man, Commander Shephard and two thirds of the Animaniacs on the case. Anyway, story. A full year has passed since the events of the original and Cinderella and her Prince are celebrating the anniversary of their happily ever after. During the celebration, Fairy Godmother drops her wand and its found by the wicked Lady Tremaine and her daughters Anastasia and Drizella. Realizing the power she now possesses, Lady Tremaine enacts her revenge by turning back time to the day Cinderella fit into the glass slipper and bewitching the prince into thinking her daughter Anastasia is the one he wants to marry. A devastated Cinderella must now fight to get her happily ever after back and get the wand back from her stepmother before she can wreak any more havoc. Let’s dive right into Cinderella III.

Main Character:

Weirdly enough, there’s not that much to say about Cinderella that we didn’t cover in the original. She’s basically just the same character in a new situation. She’s still the eternally kind-hearted but mentally tough woman we know from the first film. I do like that this time around we get to see her exchange more than one line of dialogue with The Prince, more on him in a minute as opposed to the first movie where eye contact was enough to decide that they were going to get married. Fairy tales, what are you going to do? Cinderella this time is voiced by the always awesome Jennifer Hale. Hale is usually known for playing badass characters such as the previously mentioned Commander Shephard from the Mass Effect series, Jun from Avatar the Last Airbender and my personal favorite, Thorn, lead singer of The Hex Girls from Scooby-Doo, and while I’d hardly call Cinderella of all characters a badass, she still plays the character very well. As you may recall, the Cinderella character herself was one of the things I actually liked about the first movie, so I’m glad that carried over to this one.

Villain:

Now we’re talking. Lady Tremaine is and always has been one of the most sinister and contemptable Disney villains ever and it was really cool to finally get to see her wield some real power. Like Cinderella, she’s still the same character she’s always been, but now she’s got the power to enact her ambition and sadism on a significantly grander scale. I will admit, the fact that she doesn’t just use Fairy Godmother’s magic to make herself queen presents a bit of a plot hole, but I guess she just really wanted to stick it to Cinderella. I will admit, there are moments in this movie where she is genuinely frightening with just how far she’s willing to go to get what she wants. Lady Tremaine in this movie is voiced by Susanne Blakeslee, who apparently is the go-to when you need to bring back an old school Disney villainess, Blakeslee having also voiced the likes of Maleficent and Cruella De Vil. Huh… I can’t help but wonder if there’s something going on regarding our old friend Cruella that I should be talking about. In any case, Blakeslee does a great job here and is a credit to Eleanor Audley before her.

Drizella Tremaine is pretty awesome in this movie. Of the two sisters, she’s the one more willing to go along with her mother’s plan and also might be a bit of psychopath and gets a couple of solid one-liners throughout the film. My favorite line in the movie is after Anastasia finds the wand and Drizella suggests they beat her with it.

That leads us nicely into Anastasia, who actually gets an interesting arc in the movie. She wants what Cinderella wants, to find love and be loved in return, hence why she goes along with her mother’s plan. She even starts to fall for the prince at one point, wanting to charm him on her own and without magic, but the longer she spends with the prince, the more she starts to realize that what she’s doing is wrong and wants someone to love her for her rather than who they think she is. I actually think it’s really cool that they gave this horribly vile character from the first movie a bit more depth. Good Stuff. And naturally, all of this is comes to us through the voice of Dot Warner herself, the legendary Tress MacNeille. Tress is voice acting royalty and she does a bang-up job with Anastasia.

Side Characters:

Because she gets turned to stone shortly after her wand is stolen, Fairy Godmother spends most of the movie sidelined, which is a shame since she was my favorite character in the first movie. Still, her absence allows some of the other characters a chance to be a bit more fleshed out.

The King I’d prefer to talk about in a later section, but suffice to say, he’s a much more interesting character this time around.

The Prince, who this time around is voiced by Prince Eric and Spider-Man himself, Christopher Daniel Barnes, is a DRASTIC improvement over his 1950 counterpart, mostly in that he’s actually a character this time around. Seriously, the prince in the original had maybe one line and had virtually nothing resembling a personality. This guy is friendly, funny and even a bit quirky. I actually buy his chemistry with Cinderella this time around and the way he plays off the other characters is pretty good too. They actually develop him into a cool character, or at least a character you grow to like well enough that you care whether or not he ends up with the right girl. Great job.

That brings us to… *sigh* the mice. As you may recall, the mice were solely responsible for the first movie ending up on the dreaded Never Again List. They were unbelievably annoying, hijacked the movie for several scenes and simply, would, not, shut, the, fuck, up! The mice were the Bane of my existence to the point where I think I threatened to shoot Mickey Mouse in that article, I don’t remember it was all kind of a blur, I was angry and possibly hung over at the time. Well, I’m pleased to report that in this movie, the mice have been dialed way back. They still engage in annoying shenanigans, but it’s always in service to the plot. Plus, this time around, one of the mice is voiced by Rob Paulsen, and I can never hate on Rob Paulsen, especially when he plays a mouse. Now if the other mouse was Maurice Lamarche then we’d have something cooking. There’s a thought, replace the Cinderella mice with Pinky and The Brain. Now that would be awesome.

Songs:

There are a few songs here, but none of them are anything special. The opening song is pretty lame and leads one to think that this will end up being one of the bad Disney sequels. We also get two painful generic love songs and they’re nothing to write home about. Weirdly enough, it’s the mice who probably get the best song with a number that brings The Prince up to speed on what’s actually happening in the film. It’s not great but it’s catchy and fun.

Memorable Scenes:

There’s only two scenes I really want to discuss, and one necessitates that I discuss the King. See, last time around, the king was a hot-headed goof ball obsessed with getting his son married off so he could finally have grandchildren. This time around, they make him this really sentimental guy who lost his beloved wife long ago and just wants to see his son have some of that same happiness. There’s this great scene later on where he bonds with Anastasia and opens up to her about how much he misses his wife, even admitting that he sees a bit of his departed love in Anastasia herself. He then gives her an old seashell that they found together the day they met. It’s a brief scene, but it’s actually really nice and once again showcases how this movie gives depth to some previously unexplored characters. It’s made even more sweet when at the end, after Anastasia has her change of heart, the King allows her to keep the seashell as thanks.

Speaking of the King, he’s also involved in easily the funniest scene in the movie. So, after the Prince learns from Cinderella’s mice what’s really going on, he makes a B-Line for Cinderella, who’s currently being hauled away by guards to be banished to a faraway land on the orders of Lady Tremaine. The King, upon hearing that his son has flip-flopped on who he wants to marry based on something he heard from some talking mice, understandably thinks his son has completely lost his mind and stands in his way, forbidding him to take another step down the flight of stairs. The Prince nonchalantly capitulates before leaping out the window. Personally, the whole exchange had me laughing my ass off.

Story:

Now, make no mistake, I enjoyed this film, but this aspect of it is where it kind of falls flat. The idea is an attempt to correct the original’s perceived problems. Whereas in the 1950 film, Cinderella and The Prince fell in love after making eye contact for three seconds while here they actually had to fight for their happily ever after. That’s all well and good but the execution feels a bit confused. The problem here is that Cinderella already went through her struggle. She endured backbreaking hardship at the hands of an uncaring parental figure and stayed strong throughout, so, while this movie offers us a more exciting adventure, it doesn’t really push the character forward in any way. Also, there’s this whole thing where apparently in this universe you can tell who you’re meant to be with by touching their hand. That’s a little strange and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. All that having been said, I really like how at the end, Cinderella and the Prince stay together in this timeline, even after Fairy Godmother offers to restore their original lives. Something about that works for me, though I’m not quite sure why.

The Dark Disney Factor:

While there’s nothing here that’s disturbing on the level of Clayton hanging himself or Mr. Incredible having to hide behind the corpse of his friend to avoid detection, but there’s a couple of things that a little kid watching might find a little scary. Lucifer the cat often finds himself the victim of the magic wand misfiring and transforming into nightmare clown creatures and weird goose things. Man, if you’re a cat, this movie is borderline body horror. Also, there’s this great bit where Lady Tremaine creates an evil version of the Pumpkin Carriage from the first movie and it’s pretty creepy. The carriage uses its thorny vines to take control of a nearby horse to pull it, Cinderella is trapped inside of it as it rots from the inside and a human Lucifer, who could easily be the brother of the demonic coachman from Pinocchio, is at the reigns. It’s great!

Final Thoughts: While this film isn't going to blow anyone away, I'm still grateful for the experience of having watched it. It takes a lot of what worked about the original and tries to expand upon it, and while it's not always successful in that endeavor, it is still a lot of fun. But enough of this, next time, we're taking a break from the scheduled retrospective and we're looking at a film I've been looking forward to for months. Next time, we dive deep, into Cruella!