Featuring the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Andy Dick, and Sigourney Weaver. Rated general.

Happily N’Ever After is an animated parody of Cinderella set on permanent smirk. We open in Fairy Tale Land, where all the predictable storybook tales dutifully unfold under the watchful eye of a supervising wizard (voiced by George Carlin, who, unlike the rest of the cast, appears to have wisely opted to ingest some sort of sedation). When the wizard goes on holiday, he leaves two inept goofballs (a piglike creature voiced by Wallace Shawn and a sort-of fox voiced by Andy Dick) in charge of maintaining the delicate balance between good and evil. They do so by guarding a device that resembles a souped-up butcher’s scale.

Alas, the balance is upset when Cinderella’s wicked stepmother gains control of the magical scale. The evil Frieda (voiced by Sigourney Weaver in í¼ber-bitch overdrive) delights in creating Fairy Tale Armageddon. Soon Cinderella can’t find her prince, Jack gets turned into bean dip by a stomping giant, and Sleeping Beauty stays asleep.

After a while, you realize that Sleeping Beauty got off lucky: at least she doesn’t have to sit through the grubby drivel dished out by screenwriter Robert Moreland. Everything about this movie—from the mannequinlike animation to the cheesy one-liners— is cheap, brassy, and brazenly oversexed. Does anybody here even care about kids?

Right from the opening scene—when director Paul Bolger zooms in on Frieda’s heaving cleavage and swaying booty—things seem geared to the horndog impulses of bored daddies. Any kid with even a passing interest in glass slippers and magic wands will opt to simply zone out.

A typical example of the film’s sleazed-up attempts at humour occurs when the humble dishwasher hero (the voice of Freddie Prinze Jr.) confesses to a trio of French chefs that he loves Cinderella (Sarah Michelle Gellar). The problem? She only has eyes for a doltish Prince Charming. One of the chefs nods wisely and says: “Prince Envy”. In case we miss the Freudian reference, the erect shape of the chef’s hat leaves nothing to the imagination. Just who’s being entertained here? Nobody really.