Film Threat archive logo

CINDERELLA III: A TWIST IN TIME (DVD)

By Rory L. Aronsky | February 8, 2007

(The following is a transcript of an emergency meeting held a few weeks ago by the Fairy Union)

Fairy Teamster #1: We call this meeting of the Fairy Union to order, for the express purpose of discussing disciplinary action against the Fairy Godmother for losing her wand on the one-year anniversary of marriage between Cinderella and The Prince, thus causing great havoc and distress.

Fairy Godmother: But, I didn’t mean—–

Fairy Teamster #1: Shut up. You’ll have your say later, if there ends up being anything else that needs to be said.

Fairy Teamster #2: We’ll start with the evidence, which appears to be staggering. The Fairy Godmother created a night of romance for the happy couple; cake, possibly champagne, a romantic setting, with the help of the mice Gus and Jaq. In the midst of this reverie, singing whatever song was picked out for the occasion, the Fairy Godmother let the wand slip from her hand, landing in front of one Anastasia, daughter to the Stepmother, who saw perfect opportunity to get what she wanted.

Tinkerbell: Oh, she got it all right. She got it and so did that opportunistic stepmother of hers.

Fairy Teamster #1: Tinkerbell, you do this every meeting, no matter the topic. Always something to say. You wanna say it now so we can move on?

Tinkerbell: Yeah, you bet I do. (To the Fairy Godmother): You never saw me losing my wand! Never! And I was surrounded by f*****g kids 24 hours a day!

Fairy Godmother: Oh, sure, you never lost your wand. You never had a wand you little fairy bitch! You kept those kids so hopped up on fairy dust, they thought you were Janis Joplin.

Fairy Teamster #1: All right, all right! The only reason we let this meeting be public is so that the Fairy Godmother could have the chance to defend herself openly instead of in front of the panel we usually prefer. If this goes on, we will move to have the rest of this hearing behind closed doors.

Tinkerbell: Well, f**k it. She only did enough by her actions to put the whole of our society in utter jeopardy.

Fairy Teamster #2: Moving on. Anastasia’s interception of the wand brought it to the attention of Stepmother, who, after Anastasia inadvertently changed the Fairy Godmother into a statue—

Fairy Godmother: And good lord is my back still sore!

Fairy Teamster #2: —realized that Cinderella had achieved her new royal position by magic.

Fairy Teamster #1: And the problems mounted from there. After Stepmother raised the wand to the sky and turned time backwards so she could fix what she believed to be wrong with the glass slipper situation, it was Anastasia’s foot on which the glass slipper fit. Cinderella was blocked by Stepmother and never given the chance. So it’s not a case of “What if the slipper didn’t fit?” It’s a case of “What if the slipper fit someone else?”

Fairy Teamster #2: Exactly. And while you were frozen in marble, Fairy Godmother, Stepmother and her two girls took up residence in the castle, which is the last place to ever have them, what with how nice it is. Those two overgrown brats even engaged in a massive food fight which completely upset the great banquet hall.

Fairy Teamster #1: Plus, Stepmother placed a spell on The Prince which replaced Cinderella in his memories, with Anastasia. We have always believed, ever since this Union was created, that we create magic for those who don’t have much of it, especially young women like Cinderella. We’ve already gone through an incredible PR problem after what happened to Sleeping Beauty. We don’t need this again.

Fairy Teamster #2: Fairy Godmother, we in the Union have always had great respect for you, with the grandmotherly touch you have toward those you help. And, to our minds, helping Cinderella is one of your greatest efforts. Yes, the mice helped her too, but with your trademark song, “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and of course your wand, look at what you’ve achieved.

Fairy Teamster #1: To paraphrase the cliché, she became one of the fairest princesses of them all. And it was hard watching helplessly as her stepsisters and stepmother took over what’s always been rightfully hers. And of course we couldn’t have other fairies coming into the picture, because we would have looked too desperate. Even the king himself was exasperated by The Prince changing his mind on who he wanted to marry, despite the spell which thankfully wasn’t as powerfully implemented by the Stepmother as we had feared.

The Green Fairy (last seen near the Moulin Rouge): Which king? (hic) Elvis?

Fairy Teamster #1: Oh hell, not again. Why now, Green Fairy? I thought you went through the Absyinthe Treatment Program as we ordered you to do a month ago.

The Green Fairy: ReHAAAB….is for quittersh. And I wouldn’t—urrrghhh—miss this public hanging.

Fairy Teamster #2: There’s not going to be a public hanging…..yet. There may be dwarves available to break legs, but maybe not a hanging.

Fairy Godmother: D-d-dwarves? But, my condition…

Fairy Teamster #2: Yes, age, we know. Most important now are the questions that must be answered. Fairy Godmother, we know how much trust you put in your wand. In a meeting that took place at the time you were sending Cinderella off to the Royal Ball, we had been considering security measures for wands such as yours. The trouble, as has been shown now, is that when in the wrong hands, they can still be used. Now, we did put out in the last issue of our newsletter the option to buy a LoJack system of sorts for the protection of wands. Why did you not take that precaution?

Fairy Godmother: Now, look. I don’t deny the benefits of the protection that you and the other fairies on this board suggest for wands. But in my decades of service, I have always made sure to be absolutely careful in anything I do that involves magic emanating from that wand.

Fairy Teamster #1: We know how your record has been. But you’ve celebrated countless victories in your career before without it leading to the disaster you created. Is it possible that you are now starting to slip in your work?

Fairy Teamster #2: When was the last time you put in for a vacation, Fairy Godmother?

Fairy Godmother: Ok, I see how this is going to go. I’m getting older, so naturally you’re going to start in on that angle just to weaken what I’ve already said. “She’s become dotty, so we don’t have to take too seriously what she says.” And I don’t doubt that your question about a vacation is code for “When are you going to retire?” I see it on your faces. No, Sir, don’t deny me the last years I might have in this job, because I’ve already done enough good for fairies everywhere just by being who I am. And despite what that short-skirted bitch Tinkerbell might tell you, we don’t die just from people saying that they don’t believe in fairies. The cost of health insurance does that sometimes.

Fairy Teamster #1: Ma’am, we aren’t implying what you believe we are implying. It’s just that we need to figure this out before it gets worse. Here you are, one of the foremost leaders of our mission in the world, and as you are aware, we have thousands of new, young fairies in training who have heard of you growing up and now that they are here and they see that this has happened, I don’t doubt that a lot of them may believe that they don’t have to be the best that they should be. For us, the issue is how to handle this within our own ranks as well as for those who have been helped by us before. To have them not believe in us is one thing. The ones who do, outnumber those who don’t. But for them not to trust us is what we can’t have.

Fairy Teamster #2: What you did, Fairy Godmother, was rather careless and I can’t help but think that it might have been premeditated. You were celebrating their one-year anniversary, but in letting your wand fly out of your hand, had you seen some sort of marital strife between the two before the anniversary that made you believe that things should change just so they could re-discover each other and fall in love all over again? I know it sounds far-fetched, but to understand this, every possibility needs to be considered.

Fairy Godmother: Quite far-fetched. Before this terrible incident occurred, I was well aware that their marriage was progressing as if they were newlyweds every single day, with the same sweet romance. Believe me, The Prince loved Cinderella then as he loves her now, fortunately without the threat that nearly broke them apart, thank goodness. And I know how this turned out. But we need to be honest here. This could have been a whole lot worse. This may have destroyed us all entirely had Cinderella not been as cunning as she was. Granted, posing as a royal mouse catcher was a little cuckoo because if you’ve ever seen the British TV show, “Upstairs, Downstairs,” she could have easily posed as a maid and with how enormous the castle is, with all its beautiful decorations, I believe she could have disappeared on occasion without being noticed. At the very least, this was treated with a level of dignity and poise that you generally don’t get from the kind of low-grade trash that our mermaid, genie, and Indian princess counterparts have endured. Make sure that you’re listening closely because this is the only time I will ever side with that tramp Tinkerbell. I will go so far to say that it went as well as the time she was with Peter Pan when Wendy’s daughter was kidnapped. There was danger, naturally, and we couldn’t be sure right away how it would turn out, but it’s the resiliency of these ladies that sometimes help us more than our own powers. In my case, all ended well and it was handled well. Surely that must count for something.

Fairy Teamster #1: Thank you for your candid remarks, Fairy Godmother, and now we will adjourn for an hour so the case can be deliberated. We will return with a sentence.

(The Fairy Godmother was sentenced to 20-years-to-life, serving as the voice of morality to a puppet, but the sentence was reduced to 1,000 hours of community service in Neverland after she agreed to register her wand with Central Fairy Dispatch and take a vacation of no less than one month.)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Join our Film Threat Newsletter

Newsletter Icon