Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Puss in Boots

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Alfre Woodard, anthropomorphic, anthropomorphic animal, anthropomorphic animals, Ben Vereen, boots, castle, cat, charles perrault, Constantino Fortunato, Daniel Frishman, Faerie Tale Theatre, faerie tale theatre reviews, fairy tale, fairy tale adaptation, fairy tale creatures, fairy tale history, fairy tale origins, fairy tales, fairytale, Fantasy, French, french fairy tale, funny, funny animal, giambattista basile, Giovanni Francesco Straparola, Girolamo Morlini, Gregory Hines, italian fairytale, italy, King, Marquis of Carabas, Mayor Ben, mentor, miller, miller's son, mother goose, ogre, princess, puss in boots, review, shapeshifter, shelley duvall, talking animal, talking cat, television review, three brothers, three sons, toei animation, Tony Cox, trickster, trickster mentor, tv review, Up On The Shelf, Zoobilee Zoo

“Bootmaker, I’m looking for a boot as light as air and fast as the wind. A boot that makes no sound, leaves no tracks.” “You’re in luck, I’ve got one pair left!”
– A feline acquires his defining bit of footwear

Fairytales are full of trickster mentors that aid the hero in their quest. The amount of stories where the mentor takes the form of a wily animal are beyond counting. Cats are a particularly popular choice for the role on account of folklorists making their natural stealthiness and hunting prowess shorthand for cunning and guile. And there’s no fairy tale feline more renowned for their craftiness than Puss in Boots.

Walking into this review I assumed Puss in Boots was going to be a Charles Perrault original, which is how I was introduced to it, but the story actually has Italian roots. The oldest known version is 1550’s Constantino Fortunato, or “Fortunate Constantine” by author and fairytale collector Giovanni Francesco Straparola. One of several tales included in the two-volume collection The Facetious Nights, the story is about a poor boy who marries a princess thanks to a clever cat. It’s interesting to note that this cat isn’t just a magical talking cat but a fairy in disguise; a detail that fell by the wayside in future retellings. Writer Girolamo Morlini wrote his version of Puss in Boots shortly afterwards (fair turnabout since Straparola often borrowed from Morlini), followed by Giambatta Basile in 1634. Then Charles Perrault popularized the tale in France as part of his fairy tale collection (the same that also launched the character of Mother Goose), and the feline’s fame hasn’t dwindled since. He’s even well-known in Japan, where a popular film by Toei Animation has made him the studio’s mascot.

Puss in Boots is one of those fairytales that falls into a gray area where the moral is concerned…in that there isn’t really one at all. If you go by a purely textual reading of the story, the takeaway is that lying, cheating and stealing will get you what you want without any consequences; not much of a lesson (but one that’s far too relevant if you look at the current state of the Republican Party). On the flip side, Puss uses his wits to make the most of his and his master’s lousy circumstances. He’s simply doing what he can with what little he has to improve their situation. The story takes place in a society that favors the first-born son, so it’s easy to root for the youngest son stuck with naught but a wisecracking mouse-catcher while his selfish brothers have the means to support themselves. The men and monsters Puss deceives are largely deserving of his trickery.

Tying into that is the unusual choice of clothing this cat in footwear. It’s not just for aesthetics, I assure you. Shoes were a luxury afforded only to young people of the upper-class in the Middle Ages because they were outgrown or worn through so quickly. As such, boots were a sign of wealth and status. In both the original fairytale and today’s episode, the king refuses to grant Puss an audience until he learns he wears boots. Appearances and presentation played as all-encompassing a role in society then as they do now, but the story of Puss in Boots shows that anyone with brains and the ability to pass off as refined can game the system. Make what you will of that.

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Cinderella

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ancient fairy tale, ball, Cendrillion, charles perrault, Cinderella, cinderella story, evil stepmother, evil stepsisters, Faerie Tale Theatre, faerie tale theatre reviews, fair, fairy, fairy godmother, fairy tale, fairy tale adaptation, fairy tale history, fairy tale origins, fairy tales, fairytale, french fairy tale, glass slipper, glass slippers, grimms fairy tale, horses, jean stapleton, Jennifer Beals, Matthew Broderick, mice, mice into horses, prince, prince charming, prince henry, Pumpkin, pumpkin coach, review, Romance, romantic comedy, royal ball, shelley duvall, stepmother, stepsisters, television review, the brothers grimm, tv review, ugly stepsisters, valentine, Valentines Day, wicked stepmother, wicked stepsisters, Yeh-Shen

“So you’re telling me you had a good time?” “And I owe it all to you.” “Rubbish! You did it all yourself. The cake was already made, all I did was add the frosting.”
– The Fairy Godmother lays down the truth about our long-lasting fascination with the original rags-to-riches story

Did I say Snow White held the record for the fairytale with the most variations? Silly me, how could I forget Cinderella, the story that’s so known worldwide that when I tried to research every single version for this review my computer exploded? In fact, I questioned the point of recapping this episode since you don’t need me to remind you of the plot. This is a fairy tale so widely spread across thousands of years, continents and cultures, from Ancient Greece to the Tang Dynasty, that everyone knows it in some form or another.

It’s only when I stopped to compare Faerie Tale Theatre’s Cinderella to other iterations of the story that I came to this conclusion: the devil is in the details. Cinderella’s timelessness has left it open to a multitude of interpretations, analyzations, deconstructions, reconstructions, subversions and spoofs. There is no one definitive version, which is great. You can do whatever you want with the tale if you play with the beats creatively enough. Want to change the setting to high school and make the prom the ball? Sure, why not? Remove the magical elements and place it in Renaissance-era Europe for that historical fiction approach? Whatever floats your boat. Flip the perspective to the stepsisters’ side of the story? Go nuts. Have Cinderella’s servitude be a literal curse she has to break by tearing the fairy who enchanted her a new one? Boom, done.

Cinderella has also been subjected to plenty of criticism, as a good many traditional fairy tales have lately. Forgive me for beating a dead mouse-turned-horse, but those espousing the negatives of Cinderella, from All-4-One to The Cheetah Girls to Andrew Lloyd Webber, to a whole slew of bad-faith “feminist” critiques and even YA retellings I love like Kaylnn Bayron’s Cinderella is Dead and Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Just Ella, have gotten it completely wrong. Cinderella is not, and never has been, about marrying a prince. It was, and always will be, about maintaining hope in dark times and escaping poverty and abuse through kindness and determination. That’s the eternal appeal of Cinderella, that anyone can rise to the top when it seems like the whole world’s against you. It’s also what makes a straightforward rendition in a sea of postmodern adaptations so refreshing (when done right, of course).

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: The Pied Piper of Hamelin

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“‘Please your honors,’ said he, ‘I’m able, by means of a secret charm, to draw all creatures living beneath the sun that creep, or swim, or fly, or run, after me so as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm on creatures that do people harm: the mole, and toad, and newt, and viper; And people call me the Pied Piper.’”
-An introduction to a character that needs no introduction

For 300 years, a stained glass window depicting a colorfully dressed piper stood in the church of the German town of Hamelin. Although the window was destroyed in 1660, records detail the message enshrined upon it:

In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul on June 26, by a piper, clothed in many kinds of colors, 130 born in Hamlin were seduced and lost at the place of execution near the koppen.

Another entry in Hamelin’s town records dating from 1384 follows up with a grim assessment:

It has been 100 years since our children left.

It’s said that every folk story and fairy tale has a grain of truth to them…which can make the tale in question even more disturbing when there are written accounts to back it up. Such is the case with The Pied Piper of Hamelin. We know something terrible right out of a fantasy story did indeed happen, but the details and reasoning behind it are lost to time. From there the human imagination takes over and fills in the spaces with dark suppositions. What of this enigmatic Piper who lured so many victims to an unknown fate? Is he Death personified? One of the fae? A remnant of the mysterious dancing plague that struck 14th century Europe? Was he a colorful recruiter of German colonizers looking to settle further east? A metaphor for the Children’s Crusade, where thousands of children were rounded up to take the Holy Land only to never return? Or, perhaps, a dark manifestation of the fear of child predators?

Curiously, neither the window nor documents make any mention of a rat plague that so often accompanies retellings of the Pied Piper story. That aspect didn’t appear until the 16th century. The wonder and terror surrounding the Piper’s doings have inspired one interpretation after another. Can Faerie Tale Theatre recapture the magic, or is it full of sour notes?

Christmas Shelf Reviews: The Muppet Christmas Carol

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So, is me reviewing a different version of A Christmas Carol every other year going to be a thing? Mind you I’m not complaining, each iteration has something interesting worth discussing, but if I had a nickel for every time I revisited the story for the blog on a consecutive even-numbered year I’d have three nickels.

“…which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened thrice, right?”

But enough memery, let’s go back to 1990, a magical year marred only by the passing of Jim Henson. Much like Walt Disney, the studio he founded was at a loss without their main creative driving force. Could the Muppets and the brilliant people who brought them to life go on without him?

The short answer, yes.

The first idea Jim’s son Brian had was a Halloween special. But when plans for that fell through, he turned to adapting classic literature with that singular Muppet charm. That in turn would charter the course the Muppets would take throughout the 90s and even affect them to this day.

Released through Disney since this was in that grey area before they outright bought The Muppets, The Muppets Christmas Carol was overshadowed at the holiday box office by another Disney feature, Aladdin, and one that they would eventually own, Home Alone 2. But the generation that grew up with annual viewings of this movie had the last laugh. It has since been reevaluated as a holiday classic and one of the best screen adaptations of A Christmas Carol. Yet…for the longest time I just didn’t get it. People claiming THIS was the best version of A Christmas Carol? I was convinced it had to be a nostalgia thing. To be fair, my early memories of the film weren’t exactly positive. Anything involving Muppets was a gamble for baby Shelf; there was a 50-50 chance of it being enchanting fun and games or pure nightmare fuel, and in this case it was the latter due to one scene in particular. But in 2016 I finally gave it another chance, and…

Guys, I am a Muppets Christmas Carol stan. Despite my lack of childhood sentiment, I understand what makes it such a beloved holiday fixture. When Muppets fans say this is their favorite movie in the franchise, I can smile and say “Good choice, it’s easily in my top 3-4, natch*”. Heck, for the past several years it’s usually the first Christmas anything I watch come December. Brian Henson and the Muppeteers brought their A-game as well as some familiar names in their repertoire to give it that classic Muppet feeling. Jerry Juhl returned to write the screenplay and Paul Williams, who previously wrote the songs for The Muppet Movie, crafted the ones heard here. This might be a controversial opinion, but The Muppets Christmas Carol has the best soundtrack out of all the Muppet features. Though the music in each film is usually top-notch, there’s always that one song I have no qualms skipping over (“Never Before Never Again”, “There’s Gotta Be Something Better”, you get the idea). Muppet Christmas Carol, however? Every song is perfect, and to lose any of them would be a huge detriment to the viewing experience.

And I mean any of them. Oh yeah, I’m going there.

Bah Humbug, Delayed Again!

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cartoon review, Channel KRT, Christmas review, disney review, frosty, Frosty Returns, movie review, Muppets, Muppets Christmas Carol, musical, podcast, review, tv review, update

I’m sure this comes as a surprise to no one, but the review for Muppet Christmas Carol isn’t ready just yet. There’s a lot to be said about the film and I couldn’t say it all on time, unfortunately. My goal is to have it posted before Christmas Eve at the very latest.

Since I don’t want to leave you all hanging until then, please allow me to share some delightful news: This month I hit the three-timers club on the Channel KRT podcast! I was invited to discuss the little-known unofficial Frosty The Snowman sequel, Frosty Returns, and we all had a hoot doing so. The full episode should be ready soon (and I will eagerly promote it when it is), but patrons can listen to the first 20 minutes right now for only $5. Tyler, Randee and Kit are a great bunch and I highly recommend you support them, even if it’s a one-time donation.

So until then, I hope you’re having a safe and happy holidays, and I’ll see you soon with the finished review!

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: The Three Little Pigs

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“Okay listen up because I’m only gonna say this once: open the door…or I’m gonna huff and I’m gonna puff and I’m gonna…blow your house in, whaddaya think of that?”
– The Big Bad Wolf’s ultimatum, as delivered by the only actor who could do it justice

All right, we’ve finally come to an episode many of you have been waiting for. For some fans this is peak Faerie Tale Theatre, and I agree with them. This outing has everything: a funderful cast (my way of saying fun+wonderful), clever writing, and humor coming out the wazoo. You’re in for a treat.

But first, the obligatory story behind the story.

This is another English fairytale brought to us by folklorist Joseph Jacobs in 1890, four years before he published his findings on Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ origins. Jacobs credited fellow nursery rhyme collector James Halliwell-Phillips as the source of The Three Little Pigs story. The earliest known version has a very different cast from the one we know: instead of three pigs and a wolf, it’s three pixies and a fox, and their houses were made of wood, stone and iron rather than straw, sticks and bricks. The reason behind the changes in the definitive English version are unclear; one theory is that the divergence comes from someone mishearing the word “pixie” as “pigsie”.

The fable has a few international variations, though much less than what I’ve come to expect doing this research each month. Italian retellings dating from the same era Jacobs published his story replace the pigs with geese. The one Joel Chandler Harris recorded in his collection of Uncle Remus tales appropriation of African mythology has six pigs instead of three. The one consistent theme running through them all is the moral of hard work, resourcefulness and careful planning paying off.

That’s not to say this story has some underlying darkness to it. In some iterations, even the perspective-flipped The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, the wolf eats the first two pigs after blowing down their houses. The original fairytale also ends with the third little pig tricking the wolf, killing and eating him instead! This has been toned down in future retellings, understandably so. Regardless, the rule of three in effect as well as the fun nonsense phrases like “not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin” has helped this tale remain a memorable one. Now, let’s see how Faerie Tale Theatre puts their spin on it.

Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021) Review

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adventure, Alfonso Ribiero, ballroom ghosts, Bill Barretta, Black Widow Bride, brian henson, bride, caretaker, comedy review, Constance, Constance the Black Widow Bride, Danny Trejo, darren criss, dave goelz, Dead Tom, Disney, disney muppets, Disney Plus, disney review, Disneyland, doom buggy, ed asner, film review, Fozzie Bear, Ghost Host, gonzo, Halloween, Halloween movies, haunted, haunted house, Haunted Mansion, haunted mansion caretaker, haunted mansion holiday, Hitchhiking Ghosts, Jim Henson, Johnny Fiama, Johnny Fiama and Sal, kermit, kermit the frog, Kim Irvine, Madame Leota, miss piggy, movie review, Movie Reviews, muppet, Muppet Monster Adventure, Muppet Movie, muppet treasure island, Muppets, Muppets Tonight, musical review, Pepe, Pepe the King Prawn, piggy, puppet, puppeteers, puppetry, puppets, review, Rowlf, statler, statler and waldorf, stretching portraits, television, television review, television special, The Great Macguffin, The Haunted Mansion, The Muppet Movie, the muppet show, The Muppets, theme park, theme park ride, tv, TV movie, tv review, tv series, tv special, Uncle Deadly, waldorf, Walt Disney World, Will Forte

Surprise, you’re getting another Halloween review because I couldn’t wait another 365 days to talk about my favorite spooky special in recent years.

Muppets Haunted Mansion (or as I sometimes call it, “Muppets Most Haunted”) is one of those features that feels tailor-made me. It combines three things I love: the Muppets, Halloween, and the beloved Disney ride The Haunted Mansion. If you’re wondering why no one thought to do something like this sooner, well, they did. Brian Henson’s first idea for a Muppet project after his father Jim Henson passed away was a Halloween special. Though it didn’t pan out, The Muppets Studio toyed with doing something creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky with Kermit and the gang for years.

Remember this? It started as another tv special pitch but got reworked into a video game.

This brings us to the Muppets and Disney. The last time they both got together to do anything theme park-related was The Muppets Go To Disney World special, a couple of short-lived in-park shows, and MuppetVision 3-D. Cut to thirty years later and now Disney owns them. After the success of the 2011 film, the concept of a Muppets Halloween special was revived. Longtime Muppet director and writer Kirk Thatcher took the helm, and the result is magic.

I think Jambreeqi said it best when he called Muppets Haunted Mansion a variety show with a plot connecting the segments. It’s not unlike a classic episode of The Muppet Show made feature-length. There’s guest stars, gags, bad puns and musical numbers galore, and a surprising amount of heart as well. Every second is filled with love for the Muppets and the Haunted Mansion.

Please note that I’m going to be spoiling the entire special, so drop what you’re doing and go watch it first. You will not regret it. This special is truly something worth experiencing before I color it with my own commentary, no matter how glowing it may be. While it’s been on Disney Plus for a year now, it’s making its cable debut this weekend for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet (or LAST weekend as of the time this is posted, thank you new job and stomach flu). Also, I’m aware that some of my readers have never been to a Disney park or ridden the Haunted Mansion before, so I’ll do my best to put some of the scenes, references and in-jokes in their proper context.

Vote for Your Christmas Shelf Review! (Plus Life Updates)

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A Christmas Carol, blog, blog post, blog update, brian henson, cartoon review, Christmas, christmas carol, Christmas cartoon, christmas episode, Christmas review, christmas special, christmas story, disney muppets, disney review, ghost of christmas future, ghost of christmas past, ghost of christmas present, ghost of christmas yet to come, library, movie vote, muppet, Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Movie, Muppets, review, television review, The Muppets, tv review, Up On The Shelf, update, Updates, vote, vote now

Greetings, all! Hope you’re enjoying this spooky season! It’s often around this time I open the blog to vote for multiple Christmas-related specials and films for me to review, but things will be going a little differently this year.

In September I began a new job as an Assistant After-School Tutor at the largest library in my district. It started simple enough, just helping out kids with homework and doing activities with them twice a week. The staff and clientele are great and the pay is decent, no complaints. In fact, I did well enough flying solo in my first weeks there that I got promoted! As of October 24th I will officially be the Lead Tutor, with all the raises, responsibilities, and extra workdays the position entails.

How does this bode for the blog? Well, the holidays are a busy time for me, as some of you already know. Writing three lengthy posts on top of the Faerie Tale Theatre reviews is pretty stressful even before taking the new job into account. That’s why I’m limiting myself to just two Christmas reviews – and I already have one of them picked out.

What can I say, it’s a stone-cold classic that’s hitting a milestone this year and I don’t want to pass up the chance to talk about it.

“So what do I get to vote for?” you may ask. The answer is simple, dear friends: anything on the Christmas Shelf that’s under the category “Very Special Specials”. Let me know the special you want me to look at in the comments or by emailing me at upontheshelfshow@wordpress.com. Don’t worry, you’ve got plenty to choose from.

Thanks, happy voting, and I’ll see you on October 20th with the next Faerie Tale Theatre review!

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Beauty and the Beast

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“Love can make a man into a beast. Love can also make an ugly man beautiful.”
– The Prince laying down the story’s message, with emphasis on the former in this case…

CONTENT WARNING: This review features a brief mention of violence and sexual abuse, and discusses a portrayal of an abusive relationship. If you or someone you love is in an unsafe situation with a family member, spouse or partner, it is okay to reach out for help. Links to various hotlines and organizations that can assist you will be posted at the end of the review.

Perhaps the most iconic of the “animal bridegroom” folktales spanning across the globe is Beauty and the Beast. The motif of a beautiful woman being paired with a beastly man is indeed a tale as old as time; the oldest recorded story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, includes an anecdote about a savage wild man, Enkidu, falling in love with a virtuous priestess, Shamhat. Like Snow White, though, the origins of the Beauty and the Beast story we know today can be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this time through the tale of Cupid and Psyche:

Psyche was the most kind and beauteous of three sisters, yet all who came to admire her only did so for her looks, not to pursue a wife. The attention Psyche received earned her the ire of Venus, the goddess of love. She commanded her son Cupid to make Psyche fall for a hideous creature as revenge. But on seeing Psyche for himself, he fell in love with her. Cupid vowed to protect her from his mother’s wrath. When Psyche’s father went to visit an oracle, he was told she was going to marry a horrible monster and had to be left alone on top of a mountain for it to claim her. Psyche accepted her fate, not expecting the West Wind to carry her to an enchanted palace in the clouds instead. Her lover came to her invisible each night to dote on her every whim, asking only that she never try to see his face. Psyche was happy for a while, but began to miss her family. Despite Cupid’s misgivings, he allowed her sisters to pay her a visit. The sisters were bitterly jealous of Psyche, however, and planted doubt in her heart about her mysterious husband. They convinced her to look upon him as he slept to find out who he really was. Psyche was thrilled to learn she was wife to a god, but some hot oil spilled from her lamp onto Cupid. Burned in more ways than one, Cupid abandoned Psyche, and she was forced to undertake some herculean labors in order to prove her faithfulness and win him back.

One can see how the tale would evolve into a parable about love, loyalty, and how beauty is only skin-deep. The story even took a step into reality with Petrus Gonsalvus, “the man of the woods” or “the hairy man”. Gonsalvus suffered from hypertrichosis, a condition involving hair growing all over his face. Because of his animal-like visage, people of the time barely considered him human. In 1547 he was brought to the court of King Henry II of France where he more or less filled the post of “royal freak show”. He was married to a beautiful woman, Margaret of Parma, and they had children who likewise inherited their father’s hypertrichosis. Some scholars claim it was Gonsalvus who inspired author Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve to write Beauty and the Beast. Her version of the story was published in 1740, then abridged and re-published by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont sixteen years later, with many more iterations by authors such as Andrew Lang following after.

It’s widely agreed that Villeneuve wrote her story as a way to prepare young ladies for arranged marriages. It’s easy to see the metaphor when you read it through that lens: Beauty is more or less traded to a suitor by her father in exchange for riches, she’s sent away from her family to live him, and emphasis is put on his kindness, wealth and higher standard of living as reasons to overlook his less pleasant qualities. Though the story can rise above it and the implied Stockholm Syndrome inherent when told well, only one version has successfully done so:

But since this episode came out almost a decade before Disney’s, it had to take inspiration from elsewhere…

Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Thumbelina

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“I’m always the bride, and never the bridesmaid.”
– Our heroine’s fourth wall-leaning lament

The idea of tiny people going on huge adventures is nothing new in fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen took most of his inspiration for today’s story from the seventeenth-century English tale of Tom Thumb, but his own flourishes make Thumbelina a slightly original creation. It was published in 1835 as part of the second fairy tale collection Andersen released that year, which included The Princess and the Pea. It received the same criticisms, namely the lack of clear morals, informal chatty nature and passive characters. Discouraged, Andersen returned to novel writing for a full year before trying his hands at fairy tales again.

Now, it’s no secret that Andersen used most of his stories to vent his own insecurities and frustrations. Thumbelina is no exception, though he’s a bit subtler about it this time around. It’s been theorized that Thumbelina’s platonic relationship with the swallow was a “distant tribute” to a confidante named Henriette Wuff, though there’s little evidence to support it. There’s also the beetle who admires Thumbelina’s beauty but changes its tune when he shows her off to his fellow bugs and they deem her “ugly”; an on-the-nose critique of his fickle audience if ever there was one. What’s certain, however, is that while studying in Slagelse, Zealand, Andersen was tutored by a short, stout, balding, contemptuous classics teacher named Simon Meisling who frequently abused his pupil. “You’re a stupid boy who will never make it,” he once berated him in front of the entire class. Meisling is all but confirmed to be the inspiration for the odious Mole, which proves the adage of never pissing off the writer.

Then there’s the story’s lesson, which is…complicated. On the one hand, Thumbelina bouncing around from one miserable suitor of differing species to another until she finds someone exactly like her can come across as “stick to your own kind”, which borders on yikes. On the other, when Thumbelina finally meets her fairy prince, she’s not pressed into marrying him. She chooses to marry him. Thumbelina is really a story about a woman running away from futures she has no say in to charter her own course in life, an empowering message for women in Andersen’s time – and even today, when put in the right hands.