It would be nice to able to say something good about Fairytale: Story of the Seven Dwarves (2014) also known as The 7th Dwarf (Der 7bte Zwerg in its native German), but unfortunately there isn’t really much of anything to say. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but neither is there much right.
In a change to the regular format of the famous story the Seven Dwarves are given the task of helping palace kitchen boy Jack (James Frantowski) save the beautiful Princess Rose who, on the occasion of her eighteenth birthday, has been put into a deep sleep by the evil witch Dellamorta (Nina Hagen). The adventures for Jack and his new friends come thick and fast before everything finishes as it should for all involved in a typical fairytale ending.
First lets establish one thing. Disney really are, and always have been the best studio for producing animation: after all they virtually invented it, or at least made it the art form it is today. Animation by anyone else is really little more than a pale imitation. So, taking this major element into consideration, is Fairytale any good?
Filled with all the regular nursery favourites – as well as the central characters of the ubiquitous seven dwarves and Princess Rose, the occasion of the Rose’s birthday is an excuse to introduce a host of others including Snow White, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and a slightly saucy Big Bad Wolf – there should be enough here to keep the younger audiences to whom this film’s clearly aimed, happy. However you do have to ask whether even small children will be taken in when it fails to overcome one major flaw – a lack of originality.
In recent years when the pool of fairytales from which they could draw inspiration began to stagnate, many of the larger animation studios began combining multiple characters in the same films, resulting most famously in DreamWorks Shrek (2001) and its endless stream of follow-ups. Here the production companies behind Fairytale – Zipfelmützen GmbH & Co. KG, Erfttal Film, Animationsfabrik and Virgin Lands Animated Pictures – have clearly tried the same approach. However the result lacks the polish larger, internationally well-known studios, could have given it, with the characters and adventures in which they find themselves, failing to elicit any real passion of interest from the viewer.
Add to this the fact that few, if any, of the characters – including the witch Dellamorta who has a particularly irritating voice (brought to two dimensional life by Bruegger) and Rose’s father in the form of a completely ineffectual king who does nothing but sleep even before the witches curse puts his daughter and everyone else into a deep trance – have any redeeming qualities and the result has little depth or appeal.
I could say more, but it would be unfair to continue in this vein, which I would have to if I went on. As a way to keep the kids occupied on a wet afternoon Fairytale would probably do no lasting harm. However it would be much more rewarding to give them a book and tell them to read the real thing for themselves.
★★ 1/2
Genre: Comedy, Animation, Adventure Distributor: Signature Entertainment Release Date: 13th February 2015 (UK Cinema) 13th March 2015 (UK DVD) Rating:UÂ Director: Boris Aljinovic, Harald Siepermann Cast: Joshua Graham, Matt Gilbert, Al Parrish
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