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#snarkathon – Ever After

Ever After is a Snark Lady favorite and we’ll probably fight you if you deny that it’s a cinematic classic. In spite of Drew Barrymore’s terrible accent, the subpar acting by a whole lot of people, the absurd husband bulge Dougary Scott is sporting throughout the film, and the fact that Danielle probably shouldn’t even end up with him anyway, THIS MOVIE IS WONDERFUL, OK?

The movie begins as a story within a story when an old lady is talking about how totally legit the story of Cinderella is, gesturing to a painting and having her fancy shoes brought over before launching into her story about a girl named Danielle.

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That story begins with Danielle/Cinderella as a little girl who is awesome and runs around in the mud with her little friend Gustav who tells her she does stuff like a girl and she sassily responds, “That’s what I am, half-wit!” The fact that Danielle and Gustav’s childhood wasn’t made into its own movie is a great tragedy. Also a great tragedy: she has no mother and so her dad brings home a stepmother and two stepsisters who do not approve of her mud-running fun times. I have no concept of what Danielle’s dad actually does, but they have a bunch of land and a decent enough amount of money, because this stepmother is a total gold digger, and also he brings home a lot of books. This job can’t be that serious, though, because the duration of his many business trips can be altered when he loses games of Rock, Paper, Scissors to his daughter. He sets off on a work trip and unfortunately dies of a heart attack as he’s leaving the gate.

Flash forward and Danielle is now Drew Barrymore and she sleeps in the barn with books. (This is why we love her – the books, not the outside-ness.) Specifically, with Utopia, the last book her father brought home. Her step mother is a mega bitch who has turned her into a servant in her own home. Fortunately, all the old ladies who basically raised her still have her back.

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Elsewhere, there is a prince who is totally over being a prince and arranged marriages and stuff and generally oblivious to what a shit he looks like when his privileged little life is juxtaposed with hers. Also in general because he’s a shit. He ties some sheets together to sneak out of the castle, something usually portrayed by children in movies, not grown ass men.

Danielle is doing outdoorsy things, as she often does, when she notices that someone is stealing her horse. Like a boss, she takes the guy out with a kickass apple throw. She keeps throwing and making threats and eventually he decides it’s good to be prince and reveals himself. She panics and bows and says she probably has to die. The prince blah blahs about how he’ll be lenient in exchange for her silence and “wishes for nothing more than to be free of [his] gilded cage,” because I told you he’s a total shit.

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He keeps on his merry little way, eventually getting caught because he stopped to help Leonardo da Vinci when some thieves stole the Mona Lisa. Danielle, meanwhile, decides to prove what an infinitely better human being she is by using the gold to try to buy back one of the servants who helped raise her but was sold off to help pay her evil stepmother’s taxes. She dresses up like a courtier and finds herself arguing with a man trying to take her fatherly servant to be shipped off to The Americas. Douche Prince happens upon this, which scares Danielle but he doesn’t recognize her. He laughs at the idea that slavery is bad until Danielle gives an awesome speech quoting Utopia and her friend gets to go free, but they have to leave separately. Douche Prince chases her down because he wants on that, but she shakes him off, noting how crazy privileged he is. Eventually, though, she gives in and lies and gives him her mother’s name. As fake name’s go, I think giving my mother’s name to some rando creep is off the table. Too weird.

Shortly after Douche Prince returns home, he’s given the option to get out of the arranged marriage if he can find himself another wife by this big ball the king’s going to throw in a couple weeks. NBD. Danielle’s stepmother and her stepsister Marguerite are super pumped on making sure Marguerite is that lady, doing all sorts of manipulative, scheming shit. This is a bit of a struggle, of course, because Douche Prince is totes in love with Danielle, who he meets again out in the woods when he’s hanging out with his BFF Da Vinci. He’s eventually led to believe that Danielle is a cousin of Marguerite’s and they have a big sneaky date while everybody else is at church. Lots of adventures happen on this date, but the best of all is when Douche Prince gets punched IN THE FACE by gypsies. The pair eventually befriend the gypsies, due to the fact that Danielle is the best forever.




The next day, Danielle has a wicked hangover and isn’t particularly down to go make breakfast for her shitty family. Where were all he back-having servant family members on this day? The movie does not answer this burning question and Danielle gets in lots of trouble. Danielle’s mother left behind a gorgeous dress, which Marguerite planned to steal for the big ball. Danielle comes upon Marguerite trying it on and flips out. She tries to explain how wrong this is, noting that her mother is dead, to which Marguerite responds, “Yes, and she’s dead,” so Danielle punches her IN THE FACE and it’s also amazing. These are two of my favorite face punches ever. Unfortunately, this is followed by one of the saddest things ever. Marguerite and Danielle run around the house, up until Marguerite gets her hands on Danielle’s Utopia and holds it over the fire, demanding Danielle hand over the shoes. She hesitates but eventually relents. Marguerite’s a stupid bitch and burns the book anyway. SHE BURNS A BOOK. WORST.

As it gets close to the ball, the evil stepmother finally figures out what’s going on, because everybody in town is gossiping about Douche Prince’s secret love and the stepmother recognizes the name. She puts it together while she and Marguerite are hanging out with the queen and Marguerite has an insane temper tantrum which she tries to brush off as a reaction to a bee. Stepmother explains that her “cousin” is engaged. Danielle herself tries to confess to Douche Prince, but can’t due to some combination of her inability to breathe in the dress she wore that day and maybe getting stabbed by the husband bulge. Results inconclusive. She returns home from that meeting to her furious stepmother – furious about the secret identity and the fact that Danielle hid the precious dress like a boss. Stepmother locks Danielle up and the three of them set off for the ball.

Gustav tracks down Leonardo da Vinci to explain what’s up. He comes over and pulls the bolts out of the door, getting the women to proclaim him a genius. “Yes, I shall go down in history as the man who opened a door!” He and Danielle chat about love and birds and fishes and how important is is that she get herself to the ball. She applies a metric shit ton of white shimmer powder to her face, a few rhinestones, and off she goes.

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At the ball, Douche Prince broods a lot as the king prepares to announce his mystery not-Danielle choice. The king doesn’t seem too jazzed about the choice though we never hear it because Douche Prince spots Danielle arriving just in time. He doesn’t, however, have time to actually listen to her. She tries to confess as he drags her up to his parents, but he doesn’t listen. They’re interrupted by the evil stepmother who rips Danielle’s fairy wings off (THOSE ARE DA VINCIS, LADY!) and outs her in front of everyone. Douche Prince douches a fair bit and tells her she can’t call him by his first name and sends her crying out of the party. That night, Da Vinci calls him out on being a little shit, but he doesn’t really pay attention.

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Stepmother, meanwhile, is selling Danielle off to Richard O’Brien, who played Riff Raff in Rocky Horror. She’d been selling random shit to Riff Raff for a long time, but Riff Raff agreed to return it all so she could look wealthy, in exchange for Danielle, because he’s a big old skeeze. Douche Prince’s arranged wedding proceeds as originally planned. Marguerite and her mother wear black. The Spanish princess hates this wedding idea too and sobs a lot. Douche Prince laughs at her suffering and calls the wedding off mid-ceremony. He rushes outside to find Danielle’s good stepsister Jacqueline, who fills him in on what happened to Danielle. He makes her promise not to tell anyone they spoke.

Danielle listens as Riff Raff smarms about breaking her like a horse. She gets her hand on his sword and tells him what a badass she is with a sword, demanding that he give her the key to her chains to keep from getting all sorts of murdered. He relents. Outside, freed all by her damn self, she finds Douche Prince, supposedly come to free her. He proposes to her by her actual name, which makes her happy, and also makes fun of the part where he publicly humiliated her for calling him by his actual name. In spite of that, she accepts.

Evil stepmother and family are summoned to see the king, and ordered to arrive “in style.” Only Jacqueline knows it’s a big set-up. At this audience, the queen points out that the evil stepmother lied to the queen and the queen’s all, “Oh shit.” The queen threatens to send her off to The Americas unless anyone will speak for her. Nobody does. Suddenly, they all start bowing. We see that Danielle has arrived to speak for her and asks that her stepmother be shown the same courtesy that she showed her. Boom. Justiced.

A bit later, everything’s all happy and fun, except that the prince is still a douche. Leonardo da Vinci painted a painting of Danielle as a wedding present and the happy couple kiss. We cut back to the outer-story of the movie, in which the old lady storyteller explains that the actual point of this whole story isn’t that Danielle ended up with a guy who hardcore does not deserve her, but actually that she lived. That was it. The whole point of her whole story was, “that they lived.”

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AND I’M GLAD SHE TOOK SUCH A WEIRD LONG-WINDED WAY TO GET THAT POINT ACROSS.

Now, let’s review what you all had to say on Twitter. Or some of it, anyway. Retrieving the tweets any more than a few days later is kind of a nightmare.

Join us for the next one! You voted and we’re watching Mean Girls on Saturday May 10th @ 8pm GMT. Join us on Twitter with the #snarkathon hashtag!

(Remember, with DST, your usual +/- may have changed, so that’s 4pm EDST. Figure out how that translates to your time zone.)

Nicole Sweeney (all posts)

Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.





Written by

Nicole Sweeney

Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.