Atrocious Well, I can't say that I'm surprised by how popular this movie was/is. When films like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan are being raved about as the greatest films ever made, discriminating taste is obviously not part of the mental movie-watching equipment required to get into the theatre.
Ever After is simply one of the latest additions to that growing list of subpar, lavishly praised movies. I won't even get into picking apart the plot or the acting. My primary complaint, similar to my beef with Titanic, is how we view, and more importantly - depict, the past through the glasses of our own neuroses and prejudices.
In Titanic, the assumption was that for Rose to truly be free, to be human or real, she must spit over the side of the boat and engage in drunken revels, while her fiancee goes to discuss politics over cigars. (get it, ooohh boring!) Her fiancee was not a character, but a caricature, the donkey on which James Cameron could pin the tail so that all those in the audience could squeal. We collectively engaged in trashing the past while we, the more enlightened ones, sat in the theatre congratulating ourselves and willing Rose on to degrade herself in the back seat of a car.
Now take Ever After. The Leonardo character was presented as such figures always are in popular cinema: a harmless, grandfatherly, "eccentric" old "artist." For eccentric read: cute, cuddly, quirky, the Barney the dinosaur element of his soul conquering the Botticelli/Donatello aspect. He wasn't a great man, he just knew how to paint real well. It was the Reader's Digest version of an artist. Emphasize what we have in common with the great souls, what they liked to eat for breakfast. Democratize them, make them harmless.
Prince Henry I found even more pathetic. Sorry, I really don't think he had the same need that we do in our industrialist era to make gooey distinctions between who he was and what he did. The line (slight paraphrase?) "I want to be loved not for my position, but for who I am" almost had me wretching into my popcorn. Come on! I wouldn't want this guy ruling my nation. Maybe I'd let him work in the field, where he could make helmets out of daisies and walk around in those boots that Leonardo made.
I realize some of you are saying, Hey, it's a fairy tale! So? Even the "serious" historical films are doing this. And obviously we're not learning enough history to counterbalance the lessons we're getting from our forms of entertainment. Therefore, everyone who came before was like us, and we are the apex of civilization. So let's all emote together. I'll pass, thank you.