Once upon a Kingdom

Before there was Once Upon A Time, there was The 10th Kingdom, made in 2000.  I love this miniseries! This is some of the very best creative writing ever made, in my opinion.  The main characters are whisked into a place where the fairy tales of old are real and they've all been woven together into one world.  But the world has also evolved.  Snow White and Cinderella do make appearances, but they're not the main characters.  Snow White's grandson is the primary fantasy character, so you see, life has gone on.  There's mention of Queen Riding Hood the Fourth.  What's neat is that when it can't incorporate a fairy tale directly, it incorporates elements of one.  Talking birds, the curse of the Midas touch, magic mirrors, a wishing well, and a twist on the stakes for having to guess a name which is not Rumpelstiltskin.

Funny and smartly written, it's about 6 hours long when seen in total. And the best part is that it's been forgotten about.  Why is that the best? Because it's cheap.  Not only is it cheap to buy, someone has posted it in its entirety on YouTube (broken into 5 parts) and nobody has taken it down in complaint of copyrights and things like that.  If you have the time, go to YouTube and watch it all.  Or buy it so that it'll be crystal clear and you don't have to worry about internet connections and things like that.  I'd paste it all here, but I don't like watching long stretches of things on the internet.

I'll just post the opening and a fan trailer which plays the song over and over while splicing together a summary of the series.  I will admit that this is kind of a chick flick that is geared towards women and mother-daughter relationships.  But there's enough real humor to please men as well. The feminist overtones are pretty blatant and eye rolling.  But it's 100% forgivable with the brilliant slow build story telling which I adore and the creativity that comes with weaving all of these different fairy tale elements together.   This is one of my all time favorite movie projects ever!  Watch it!!!