Best Live-Action Fairy Tale Adaptations

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It’s Thursday again and you know what that means – this week we’re being asked to list our favourite live-action fairy tale adaptations. Not such an easy feat for some of the Assholes, but we’re giving it a go! Thanks, Wanderer, for your inspired themes.

Jay

It’s probably telling that though we owned copies of Cinderella and The Little Mermaid, I was never a very Princess-oriented little girl. Even as a kid, I preferred darker stories, and so my go-to fairy tale was always and still is Labyrinth.

I’m sure you know it: it’s about a teenaged girl (Jennifer Connolly) who makes a stupid wish that actually makes her baby brother disappear. Realizing her mistake, she has to win her brother back from the Goblin King by solving his labyrinth in just 15 hours. This movie combines two things that are so awesome I might call them otherworldly, and putting them together just multiplies their effect. First, David Bowie as the Goblin King: absolute perfection. To this day you couldn’t cast it better. The hair, the pants, the eyebrows! Second, Jim Henson. He brings some fairly complex puppets into the mix, some inspired by the genius work of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are. Henson surrounds Bowie with a cast of Goth Muppets that create this hyper-real fever dream. The story’s fairytale roots stoke the fires of Jim Henson’s imagination beautifully, and we’re absorbed and suspended into a world where anything can happen.

For my second pick, I’m going with Penelope. Penelope is lovely girl (Christina Ricci) from a wealthy family who was born with the face of a pig. The pig-face is the result of a curse put on her family by a witch in retaliation for their rejection of a house maid turned away when a member of the house impregnates her. Generations later, Penelope bears the brunt of her family’s indiscretion. To break the curse, Penelope must find “one of her own” to love her. Her suitors (including a roguish James McAvoy), however, may be more interested in her money than in true love. The movie gives life to the other side of the tale, a modern girl born only to be hidden away in shame, and what that has meant in terms of self-worth. I think it’s also an interesting example of how, with a little suspension of disbelief, we can invest in a fairy tale without a lot of big-budget effects and other trappings familiar to the genre. The fairy tale is made much more accessible and relatable on this plane.

I’ve been waffling over this third pick for a while. I felt like maybe I should go with a more classic adaptation, but damn it to hell, I’m going with a Cinderella story because it’s one that’s been told more than 700 times, in many different ways, all around the world. We just saw Disney’s live-action effort last night (quite good), but the one that will still stands out to me is Pretty Woman. It’s actually a pretty faithful adaptation, if a little modernized: a young woman with no family is forced into a life of hard work (prostitution, if you will). She meets a handsome prince (or millionaire businessman) and they start to fall in love, but she’s not from his world, so neither of them thinks the love with last. However, with the help of a fairy godmother (called Visa) she is magically transformed. But the prince must love her for who she really is, so she feels, and he follows, searching her out on her turf, his heart (and possibly other organs) swollen with love. And because this is a fairy tale, the ho and the ethically-questionable businessman live happily ever after. We assume.

Matt

If you joined us last Thursday, you might have noticed that I gave Luc a bit of a hard time about his lack of interest in black and white movies made after (or even before) 1970. Well, I’m hoping he loves live-action fairy tale adaptations because I can’t seem to find the same level of enthusiasm this week. It’s not that I object on principle. I don’t see any reason why stories that have so often inspired such great animated films can’t be reimagined as great live-action ones, especially with less pressure to conform their content to a G rating. Maybe because we can’t bring ourselves to set aside our cynicism for even two hours without the obviously manufactured world of animation but it’s a lot harder to believe in magic when it is Elle Fanning- not Sleeping Beauty- who can only be woken by True Love’s Kiss and almost every recent film in this sub-genre is almost embarrassing to watch. Still, after thinking about it all week, I have managed to come up with 3 worthy exceptions especially when allowing myself a little leeway with the rules.

Babe- When I say that Babe is one of my favourite films of the 90’s, I don’t mean “favourite family movies”. I don’t know if it can be called a fairy tale under the strictest definition but it seems to think of itself as one. There may not be any fairy godmothers, pixie dust, or spells, but there are singing mice, scheming cats, an unlikely hero with the most innocent of hearts, and one of the most genuinely magical experiences of its decade.

Hook- Steven Spielberg makes my list two weeks in a row. Technically more a Peter Pan sequel than a peter Pan adaptation, Spielberg’s 1991 film is one of his most underappreciated. Now a cynical corporate lawyer who hates flying, Peter Pan (Robin Williams) is all grown up and has literally forgotten about Neverland. With the help of Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts), he must learn to fly again to save his young kids who have kidnapped by Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman) who is still holding a grudge. Hook makes great use of almost every one of Williams’ many talents and Hoffman is brilliantly cast and will likely put Garrett Hedlund to shame in this summer’s Pan.

Into the Woods– Some of the most memorable fairy tale characters of all time meet in the woods in last year’s extremely entertaining adaptation of the Broadway musical. The stories take on a darker tone than we might be used to but the spirit of the stories survive.

Sean:

The Princess Bride: the best of the best. This is a fairy tale that a teenage boy could not only

enjoy and relate to, but could talk about with other teenage boys. The Princess Bride is endlessly quotable, sincere but not serious, and effortlessly original while remaining true to the essence of a fairy tale. I still love this movie and I expect it will be one that continues to be discovered and enjoyed for as long as we watch movies.

The Wizard of Oz – this is a timeless movie that still holds up. Even the changing technical limits of the day add something to the movie, being in black and white initially, with colour then appearing once Dorothy gets to Oz. It’s so well done, the songs are catchy, the characters are memorable, and the big reveal at the end is one of the best twists ever. One of my favourite parts about the movie is that even after the curtain is pulled back, everyone still gets to live happily ever after, the very definition of a fairy tale.

Cinderella (2015) – we just saw this last night and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

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No surprises, no changes, no updates to the classic Disney tale, and that’s probably for the best. It was the definition of a fairy tale made into a live action movie, line for line, shot for shot, and mouse/horse for mouse/horse. At our screening, all the little (and some not-so-little) girls in their princess costumes clearly loved this movie and I could see exactly why they did. I would have said Cinderella is this year’s Frozen except that this year’s Frozen is going to be Frozen Fever, the short accompanying Cinderella, which made a little girl in the theatre gleefully exclaim, “Look at those dresses!”

Marrying Father Christmas

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So first of all, the good news is, there’s no way this movie can be as bad as its title. Right? Ten seconds in, I receive a shock. This is merely the “latest installment” in the “Father Christmas franchise.” Oh? IMDB fills me in: Finding Father Christmas and Engaging Father Christmas have come before. Indeed, terrible titles seems to be a bit of a tradition for these people.

Miranda (Erin Krakow) and Ian (Niall Matter) met at Christmas two years ago, when she was on a quest to learn the identity of her birth father. He was dead but his widow MV5BNGZhNDk2MWItNjA5ZS00M2FhLWJkY2EtMDBhM2JjMjFiMjU0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNzc2NTMwNzQ@._V1_ Margaret (Wendie Malick) welcomed her with open arms. Miranda and Ian got engaged on Christmas last year even though an ex-boyfriend was pursuing her. Guess what they’re doing this year! No really. Guess. If you guessed getting married, well, shame on you. Apparently Miranda (Erin Krakow) and Ian (Niall Matter) have a history of problems arising, putting their relationship on ice. This time it’s an uncle she never knew existed.

Hallmark has taught me that there’s a wider variety of Christmas careers than I’d ever thought – and I don’t mean the actors who film these movies. Our dear Miranda makes her living decorating offices for Christmas. I do not know how she sustains that yearlong, and since the franchise only catches up with her around the holidays, I guess we’ll never know. TWO of Hallmark’s other heroines were prolific wreath makers. We’ve met Santa photographers and gingerbread makers and the people behind the curtains of Christmas pageants. So our Miranda decks the halls of corporate offices. And even though that seems like a pretty season job, she’s taken off this Christmas in order to get married. So I suppose her clients got beChristmased in August.

Marrying Father Christmas has long-lost relatives, new flames, old memories, and even some Dickens. I didn’t give a shit about this movie until the last 2 or 3 minutes, when they FINALLY get married in an intimate, wintry cottage setting, which is how I got married, only mine was of course much better because they were working on a Hallmark budget and I was spending ALL of Sean’s money. Plus, I’m a more is more kind of girl, with expensive, exquisite taste. Plus, when Sean and I were saying our vows, there was no awkward flashback sequence to the rest of our dating “franchise.” We saved all the cheese for the cheese course, which was fabulous.

Trash We Watched on the Weekend

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It’s fairy-tale week here at Assholes Watching Movies. Tomorrow night we’re taking our grumpy butts over to the Coliseum to watch Cinderella, live-action in all her glory.

Our friend Wanderer challenged us this week to name our favourite live-action fairy tale adaptations. As usual, we Assholes like to do our homework, so this weekend Matt, Sean, and myself made several pitchers of martinis and settled in for some “classics.” For those of you with strong stomachs, we live-tweeted the experience @assholemovies . For the rest, here were our thoughts:

The NeverEnding Story (1984): Turns out, Matt and I have not seen this one; we were thinking of the sequel the whole time. We had to pause the movie 4 minutes in to have a lengthy discussion about Jonathan Brandis. Anyway, the first one is about a little boy who hides from the world (and his bullies!) and reads the day away, becoming involved in this magical book. The story follows Atreyu, another little boy, but also the brave warrior who must save The Childlike Empress of fictional Fantasia and gets to ride a dragon who looks like a dog named Falkor while doing (fair trade though, he did lose his horse, who Matt felt was a better actor than the kid). Sean, who is much, much older than Matt and I, still considers this a beloved film from his childhood (he probably watched it on a projector while eating the lead paint chips from his crib) and can still sing the theme song (rather badly, no many how many martinis he’s had, or we’ve had). There were big stone boobs in it though, so you can’t really blame the guy: it’s probably where his little fixation started.

LadyHawke (1985): I still have no idea why it’s called Ladyhawke and not Manwolf, because this tale is about both. Michelle Pfeiffer stars as the eponymous lady who turns into a hawk, cursed by an angry bishop to be forever separated from her lover, who happens to turn into a wolf just as she takes human form. But don’t worry, bumbling, baby-faced Matthew Broderick doing a terrible Middle Ages accent to the rescue! In this movie, Matt was more critical of the animals’ performances. He really felt that the birds all seemed downtrodden and perhaps just too starstruck to turn in good work – and it turns out, he was right! An animal handler said they actually had to replace one hawk because he was so chuffed about sitting on Blade Runner’s arm, he ruffled his feathers and looked more like a chicken. So: score one, Matt.

Freeway (1996): The movie Reese Witherspoon is trying to get expunged from IMDB. It’s supposedly a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, where Red belongs in juvy, her mama’s a whore, her grandma lives in a trailer park, and “Mr. Wolverton” (Keifer Sutherland) is a serial killer with a preference for spilling white trash blood. It’s so crude and crass it carried an NC-17 rating – and really fouled up our Twitter feed! Still debating who had the better line. Reese: “My ex-husband’s parole officer hasn’t even been born yet” or Keifer: “Don’t be offended by my next question, but did your stepfather ever molest you?” You can’t make this stuff up!

X-Men: Days of Future Past

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I watched this movie with Jay on our way to Paris and it was awesome. Guardians of the Galaxy is still my favourite superhero movie of 2014 but Days of Future Past was almost as good, and I was not expecting that at all.

I read X-Men as a kid and loved it (it was probably my 2nd favourite comic behind Spider-Man). Then in my early 20s, the first X-Men came out, and I loved that! And the 2nd movie was possibly better than the first. And then the third movie came along, and it was so awful it ruined everything that had come before. It was very similar to the Matrix trilogy in that way. But unlike the Matrix, this franchise has done the impossible and resurrected itself.

This movie works in a lot of ways. It is a bridge between the entertaining prequel (X-Men: First Class) and the original trilogy. It is a standalone timetravelling adventure starring a bunch of familiar faces (it was very cool to see so many people from the previous movies make appearances, and all of them felt natural rather than squeezed in). And it is probably the most satisfying reboot I have ever seen. Too many superhero franchises have been rebooted lately, for no real reason other than a lack of imagination. I don’t need to see Peter Parker get bitten by a spider again. I didn’t ask for a new take on the Fantastic Four whose only purpose seems to be retaining the movie rights. But I was satisfied, and even excited, to see the slate wiped clean here and feel that the future for this franchise is brighter than ever. I am looking forward to see where they go from here (and apparently it involves Apocalypse!!!).

By the way, please stop putting extra scenes in the credits. It was alright once or twice but it’s played out at this point, and for the last several movies I have had to look it up onYoutube after the fact.

Overall, this was an extremely enjoyable movie, though probably too dense and convoluted for someone who isn’t a fan. But better that than another origin rehash! It gets 9 angst-filled outcasts out of 10.

What We Do In The Shadows

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In 2008 I came across this brilliant movie, Eagle vs Shark. It’s a special brand of dry and awkward humour that’s only really appreciated by about 0.3% of the population and so of course I started using it as a social barometer. It’s how Sean went from ‘guy I’m sleeping with’ to ‘husband’ (we had no in-between). That’s not to say he didn’t shoot me weird looks during the movie, but he laughed in the right places and so I knew it was safe to fall in love.

Taika Waititi wrote and directed Eagle vs Shark, bringing along pal and fellow countryman Jemaine Clement (of Flight of the Conchords fame) to star, and they’re back again with What We Do in the Shadows, sharing duties and screen time. It’s not easy to get such an offbeat comedy from New Zealand shown in North American theatres (I believe crowd funding was involved) so I consider myself lucky that one lonely theatre is showing it here in Ottawa.

The movie is a mockumentary involving the daily lives of a small group of vampires who decided for better or worse to eschew the typical haunted castle in Europe route and room together in New Zealand instead. The documentary crew follows them as they encounter the normal highs and lows of flatting together, sorting out who does the dishes, who picks up the dry cleaning. A chore wheel goes unused. A couch that wasn’t red now is – one vampire suggests putting down newspapers before they eat someone, or towels, perhaps, but “We’re vampires, we don’t put down towels” responds another. Like The Real World, only they just happen to also be vampires, sometimes many hundreds of years old.

The vampire genre might be overworked and overtired these days, but this one feels fresh and inspired, living up to the high bar set by Christopher Guest and the likes of Best in Show. My sides ached from constant laughter, the nicest ache I know. Waititi, Clement, and co-stars work really well together. It’s clear that tonnes of improvisation must have gone into this, the dead-pan delivery spot-on, the timing the best you’ll see. It never feels like a straight parody. It’s much too clever for that. Instead it finds humour in the mundane, staying for away from the obvious and easy but finding gold everywhere else.

Veronica Mars

Hello Ladies

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When Stuart’s ex-girlfriend comes for a visit, he plans to impress her with a fake but dazzling L.A. lifestyle and an even faker supermodel girlfriend. No room for comedy there!

I hope by now we’re all familiar with Stephen Merchant, once known more as a Ricky Gervais’s big, goofy side kick and collaborator but actually a brilliant writer, comedian, and performer in his own right. Hello Ladies is actually a feature-length follow-up to his successful (but sorrowfully cancelled) HBO series that he writes, directs, and stars in himself. Even if you haven’t seen the series, the movie works as a stand-alone little piece of funnery and is accessible to anyone. It’s based on his stand-up which is always stellar. If you’ve failed to appreciate Merchant in The Office (BBC) or Extras, then feel free to start with Hello Ladies and work your way backward. There’s no bad starting point.

Run All Night: An Ode to Aging Action Stars

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It’s not going to take a whole post to tell you I didn’t like Run All Night. I mean, it’s fine. It’s exactly what you expect. It’s a movie capitalizing on Liam Neeson’s strange turn as an elderly action star. It doesn’t bother to be particularly good, not even as good as Taken or The Grey, which didn’t set the bar high to begin with. Liam Neeson plays a retired goon who gets pulled back into the biz when threats to his estranged son force him to kill his best friend’s (and ex-boss’s) son. Father and son “run all night” to avoid the bullets they both know are coming.

Now, I’m not one to talk shit about Liam Neeson. That man’s just got sex appeal (Liam agrees, by the way – “I never did think of myself as handsome–terribly attractive, yes, but not handsome.”) Plus, I’d be worried he’d tape shards of tiny bottles of liquor to his hands and wake me up from sleep with his heavy breathing. Once upon a time, he was known as a “serious” actor, garnering an Oscar nomination for his role in Schindler’s List, and a couple of Tony nominations as well. Steven Spielberg was anxious to re-team with him for the Lincoln biopic but after several delays of the project, Neeson felt he was getting too old for the part and let it go to Daniel Day-Lewis. Apparently he’s not too old to run around the streets of New York, shooting cops and robbers though. He’ll be 63 this summer, and has somehow been rebranded the thinking man’s action hero (note to Liam: another movie like this, and we’re retracting the thinking part). He’s almost as surprised by this turn of events as we are: “I thought it was going to be a straight-to-video release (he’s talking about Taken). That is actually one of the reasons I did it, to be honest. I felt like spending three months in Paris, I’d get to do all this physical stuff that no one would think of me for, and that the film would go straight to video. Then it became this big success. I was a tiny bit embarrassed by it, a tiny bit, but then people started sending me action scripts.”

I bet he’s not so embarrassed now. He earned a nice 5 million dollar paycheque for Taken, but for Taken 2 he demanded 15, and he got 20M for Taken 3. So he’s not just a bankable action star, he’s making serious bank doing it. Liam Neeson is only the latest incarnation of the aged action hero, he’s not the first and I have a feeling he’s not the last. For some reason we have an obsession with old, grizzled action stars and The Expendables series is all over it like a donkey on a waffle.

There is no young hot new action star. There just isn’t. A young man’s action movie has been taken over by the super heroes and that’s created a vacuum where the old guys have been allowed to stick around, and in fact, have been brought back, resurrected. These are action movies for Baby Boomers, the generation THAT WILL NOT RETIRE. Arnold Scharzenegger (67) has a new Terminator movie in the works. Sylvester Stallone (68) has a new Rocky movie. Bruce Willis (turns 60 later this month) is working all kind of action franchises, Die Hard certainly, and Red, and has even more in the works. You cannot kill these men, or the characters they originated before I was born.

Speaking of invincibility: the most pervasive action star is Tom Cruise. He’s “only” 52, a young man in this crowd, but this ageless wonder has somehow kept his body in vintage form. It’s very possible that he sleeps in a large pickle jar and only comes out to run very, very fast on camera, pumping his little arms in a $2000 wind breaker, or else to flash his whitewhite teeth on the red carpet. And I’m sure he pays handsomely for a crack team of Scientology “doctors” to pull very , very hard on his strings to keep everything where it should be: a fine specimen. No wonder he’s in better shape than he has any right to be. In the next few months we’ll see him in Mission Impossible 5, Top Gun 2, and Jack Reacher 2. It’s guys like Cruise who make guys like Colin Firth (54) think they should give it a chance too – hit the gym, do your own stunts, the works, which Mr. Darcy does rather well in Kingsman.

Hollywood is bending over backwards to tell boomers what they want to hear: you’re not irrelevant! We still need you! You’re still capable! “Retirement is for sissies!” as one of Sly’s posters for The Last Stand so succinctly put it. Not only are we reassuring boomers that they’ve still got it, the narrative is that they’re actually better than the young men trying to push them out of the way. In Taken, and in Red, and in countless others, the opponent is much younger (almost as young as the action star’s wife – gross!). In The Expendables 2 (SPOILER ALERT!) there’s only one young guy on the team, and he’s the one who dies. Because boomers are so much better than everyone. Because they have all this valuable life experience, and even if their bodies are a bit droopier, and their reflexes a bit duller and their instincts a bit slower they can still magically make the young dudes disappear. As always in life, the old white man is king.

Kinky Boots

Draft Day

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The girl behind the counter shrugged when I asked her if Draft Day was any good and told me that she didn’t know much about football. I can relate. Jay and Sean had to explain pretty much every play to me when we went to see the Ottawa Redblacks play last year. In fact, the joke I made at the video store was “The only thing I hate more than sports is sports in movies”. To which she replied incredulously “Then what are you renting this for?”.

I didn’t know what to tell her and still wouldn’t. I guess my thinking was that having this site is going to sometimes involve taking the time to check out movies that I would normally have given a pass.

Set almost entirely in the hours leading up to the impending NFL draft, Draft Day- as I was relieved to discover- barely has any football in it and assumes pretty much zero knowledge of the game or the NFL. Seattle is even introduced as “Home of the Seahawks”. Instead, the action takes places off the field as we get a behind the scenes look at the trades, negotiations, and strategizing as unpopular Cleveland Browns GM Sonny Weaver (Kevin Costner) tries to make a big enough splash to save his job.

Draft Day is a strange movie and I’m not sure who director Ivan Reitman (who I’m pleasantly surprised to see is still working) was hoping would embrace it. Instead of inspiring locker room speeches and risky plays we get contract negotiations and conference calls. Costner throwing a laptop across the room in frustration is really the most action we can hope for here. So there’s more Moneyball than Remember the Titans but even Moneyball found the time to show us some baseball.

Sadly, Aaron Sorkin, who co-wrote Moneyball, was not available to write Draft Day and, while the former was witty and suspenseful the latter is exposition-heavy and surprisingly predictable. So who is the target audience for a sports film that is too blandly written for film fans and too talky for sports fans? I’m starting to think it was written for me. The diligence it takes in explaining to the audience what just happened, while probably insultingly patron to most, provided me with the only real pleasure I got from the experience as I continually found myself patting myself on the back for keeping up with it.