In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Having been watching quite a few versions of the Cinderella fairy tale, I'm glad I watched this one last, 19 years later today in 2017, November 21st. At first I thought to myself this is gonna be the same experience, which was always a good watch with every other Cinderella adaptation by the way, but I was wrong. This version is very refreshing, while still true to the core elements of the original story, it is done differently, which is quite surprising and give different enjoyment throughout the duration of the movie.Drew Barrymore's performance is very captivating, she portrays Cinderella very beautifully.

Well, it is a fairy story, (sort-of), with an awful step- mother(Huston), and step-sisters, one of whom looks so much like the main character Danielle (Barrymore) that I had difficulty connecting with either! So, the casting people could have done better? The other sister is blonde, and instantly recognisable.Prince Henry (Dougray Scott) is the star of this movie for me, although the others get the main billing. He gets a lot of time and can show a lot of emotion and attitude that adds so much to any movie. And I liked the brief appearance of Timothy West as the Prince's father. And then there is Leonardo Da Vince no less! and he gets some great lines and scenes.

The well known familiar fairy tale is bought into Renaissance Italy. Her evil stepmother Rodmilla (Anjelica Huston) has reduced Danielle (Drew Barrymore) to little more than a maid after the death of her father. Marguerite (Megan Dodds) is the horrible stepsister, and Jacqueline (Melanie Lynskey) is nice one. Prince Henry (Dougray Scott) can't stand his home, and runs into Danielle one day as well as Leonardo da Vinci (Patrick Godfrey) rescuing his Mona Lisa painting. Leonardo would be the fairy godmother.Drew Barrymore is doing a weird British accent in a costume drama taking place in 16th century Italy. There are castles and horses but little grandeur. Although it's a nice idea, it doesn't have any tension or magic. It's not gritty enough to be real nor beautiful enough to be fanciful. The story itself is good triumphing over evil just like the fairy tale.

I am usually wary of films based on fairy tales; with the exception of the brilliant animated classics of the Disney studio and the occasional musical (Rodgers and Hammerstein's version of this very story), most of them are boring at best and dreadful at worst. So it was a delightful surprise to experience EVER AFTER: A Cinderella STORY, a film that brings a refreshingly feminist sensibility to the main character without violating the fantasy.We all know the story: Cinderella (named Danielle here and beautifully played by Drew Barrymore) lives with her nasty stepmother (Angelica Huston, looking like a cobra) and her two stepsisters, Marguerite (Megan Dodds) and Jacqueline (Melanie Lynskey). Her father is dead, and her stepmother has relegated her to the status of household servant. Her stepsisters are not equally nasty: Marguerite is as bitchy and spoiled as her mother, but Jacqueline is made of softer stuff and tries to make Danielle's life easier, though she isn't strong enough to actually defy her terrifying mother (at least not until the end of the picture).Of course, the core of the film is the romance between Danielle and Prince Henry (Dougray Scott); when they first meet she quotes from Sir Thomas More's UTOPIA, one of the few possessions of her father's that she has left; the prince is not only struck by her beauty, but fascinated that a "commoner" (and a woman at that, though this is left unsaid) can quote from great literature. Danielle hides her identity from the prince; when he asks her name she gives him the name of her deceased mother.I don't need to go into details. A few plot devices have been added, which is fine because this is the sort of tale that was probably passed on from mother to child in an oral tradition long before anyone put pen to paper. Drew Barrymore's Cinderella is not only breathtakingly lovely, she's fiercely intelligent and possessed of an iron will. Prince Henry is a refreshingly real character; in his first encounter with Danielle he reveals his contempt for "commoners" and is sharply instructed by Danielle, which does not make him angry but only fascinates him the more. The rest is mostly intact: the ball, the Prince's discovery of Danielle's true identity, and his almost-marriage to a most unwilling Spanish princess in what is easily the funniest scene in the whole film.The cast is uniformly magnificent, though the accents are a bit variable. Aside from Huston, Barrymore, and Megan Dodds, all of the principal actors are some form of British (Dougray Scott is Scottish and was trained in Wales and Melanie Lynskey is from New Zealand). Of the Americans in the cast, Megan Dodds pulls off the English accent the best; in fact I was quite surprised to learn she was born in California. Barrymore's accent is adequate; the passion she brings to the role more than makes up for minuscule patterns of speech. Huston's accent is more Upper West Side NY aristocracy than anything else, but again, the actress throws herself into the role with a gusto that makes the rest easy to overlook.Also on hand is one of my favorite English character actresses, Judy Parfitt (DOLORES CLAIBORNE), who plays the Queen of France as a delightfully human woman, who loves her son and wants only the best for him, and also loves her husband enough that she can laugh and tease him, but when necessary she becomes regal, icy, and every inch the Queen, whom one can imagine yelling "OFF WITH HIS/HER HEAD!!"This sort of film is risky territory, because the tales we remember from childhood often remain vivid in our minds and it's a rare film that can take whatever liberties the writers and director take and still be pleasing. This one is probably one of the best; it is beautifully written, acted, and photographed, the costumes are sumptuous, and the writers cleverly inject enough comic relief to keep the mood light.As romances go this one hits a home run.