The box claims it's got more magic, wonder, and suspense than the original, but there's no way that could be. But like Cinderella II, this one is semi-enjoyable, and not a total atrocity.

Now to put a time frame on Twist, understand it starts a year after Cinderella has married the Prince. Lady Tremaine magically rewinds time to the moment when the Grand Duke shows up with the glass slipper in the first film. Thus the first segment of II, starting right after Cinderella's honeymoon, has already happened in the beginning of Twist, but time is then rewound; the third segment with Anastasia and the Baker happens entirely after Twist; and the second segment, which was the stupid little story about the mice, is completely irrelevant. Got that?

It becomes pretty clear, really. So in Twist, they have built on the second one instead of ignoring it, as I had expected them to do. At least, Twist has an original plot. With the exception of Jacques & Gus' song, and the one at the end, the music in Twist is lame. The whole movie still has that "I'm not even going to try to live up to my original" sequel feel. The animation, while it looks good overall, is actually horrible upon close inspection—so horrible, in fact, that it's absolutely hilarious. I mean, usually I have to slow down and pause the movie to see all the hysterically funny individual frames of the characters, but in this one, I saw amazingly exaggerated, hideous, hilarious things go right by on the screen, though we were obviously not supposed to notice.

Depth is added to certain characters; we meet the King's Queen (albeit in paintings), and discover a truly romantic side to the goofy King. The Prince, instead of being a personality-free, rhino-hating, long-eyelashed nobody like he was in II, is now a really nice, humble, long-eyelashed main character with a really modern and less formal attitude. It's a bit ridiculous, but so is everything else and it makes for some great lines and expressions. What depth there is in this film comes mostly at the part where Cinderella's walking aboard the ship to be banished. Cindy also ends up having to be kind of tough, escape danger, protect Anastasia from a spell aimed at her by her own mother, and foil the diabolical plans of Lady Tremaine involving Anastasia as a 'Twinderella.'

I felt as if they were combining elements from other Disney films, like Tarzan, Beauty & the Beast, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid. I mean, when the King was showing Stacy the Kingdom I expected him to warn her against going to the elephant graveyard. Since we know Stacy's going to find true love with a baker, we can see why she's portrayed sympathetically from the start. Drizella spends the movie making wisecracks and it seems that she's too greedy and attached to her mum to take the step towards redemption that Stacy has, but she's fully capable of it. It's a bit disturbing to hear Lady Tremaine say "Bibbidi bobbidi boo" so much, but she does, and Stacy lets her talk her into all kinds of trickery before getting her lesson about true love (that it's the most powerful kind of magic there is, that her mom doesn't get it, bla bla.) She finds out she wants true love, but she's not going to get it from the Prince, and she winds up refusing to split him up with Cindy.

The humorous parts: Well, as always the Grand Duke and King are outrageously funny. Now, the Prince is pretty funny himself. Drizella is a repulsive pig (in more than one way—watch her face when Tremaine brushes her hair, please) and Stacy is the worst dancer in the world.

OK, the one thing that angered me about Twist was the one character I really liked from the second one, the one I thought saved it and made it any good. I was, admittedly, pleasantly shocked to see that she'd made it into this movie at all. But Holland Taylor's voice talent was pretty much wasted and it's almost as if they shouldn't have included Prudence at all. I mean, she is drawn completely differently and looks incredibly weird now. Her eyes are no longer green. She disappears before the movie is half over, and doesn't interact with anyone but Cindy. She had basically no purpose and was nowhere near as cool as in the second one. I can only say it was neat to see her in the castle before the time of the second movie. Additionally she revealed that she's supervised for 30 years, offering a clue to how old she is. But anyway, the best couple by far in Dreams Come True was her and the Grand Duke. I didn't expect any more character development in Twist, after all, it's before the point where she dances with him and we see that she's not exactly as she appears to be. It's just that..I don't know, I wanted something more than the absurd scenes they gave her. It's no coincidence that the King threw her onto the Grand Duke at the royal banquet, in that segment it's pretty obvious in the beginning that he and Prudence like each other and do a bit of flirting. I thought we'd at least see them together in one of the portraits at the end. I certainly didn't expect them to be married and having kids or anything because again, this is before they actually hooked up. But, still…I felt Prue was dreadfully underutilized and didn't meet her potential.

Except for the shameful things like that, Twist was worth a watch or two.