(For most of the film’s run time, anyway.)

Well, that…and ‘‘Let It Go,’’ of course.

If only endless, ever-cruder sequels hadn’t ultimately diluted that message.

Image

Disney

(Jeremy Renner’s Hansel gets it as a result of eating all that candy at the gingerbread house.

Who knew audiences would ever root for the wicked monarch to defeat the fairest of them all?

The evil ‘‘queen’’ is a sorority president named…RachelWitchburn(Sara Paxton)!

Angelina Jolie | Casting an old story’s villain as the hero is about as revisionist as it gets. But Disney’s attempt to add shading to one of the

Frank Connor

Instead of seven dwarfs, the heroine (Amanda Bynes) takes refuge with…sevendorks!

Sydney’s beloved computer is beset with a virus called…The Poison Apple!

At least Pettyfer avoided the embarrassment of a fur suit; his beast gets covered in badass tattoos instead.

Shrek | Everything from sterile fantasy theme parks to cute bluebird-princess singalongs gets gleefully skewered in Dreamworks' blockbuster, which functions on one level as a straight parody

Dreamworks

Battle sequences that seem lifted wholesale from better, more interesting movies?

Check, check, and check.

The whole thing is as sweet and satisfying as a good beignet.

You know what’s missing from the original ‘‘Hansel & Gretel’’ story? Guns. And automatic crossbows. And diabetes. (Jeremy Renner’s Hansel gets it as a result

David Appleby

Also, one of those dudes is named ‘‘Peter.’’

As in ‘‘Peter and the Wolf.’’

Screenwriting just doesn’t get much lazier than that.

It’s a shame that offscreen drama overshadowed this onscreen ‘‘Snow White’’ face-off. Rupert Sanders' action-adventure, grrrl-power take on a classic tale of passivity isn’t perfect

Universal

GREAT: A.I.

Also: Meryl Streep as the Blue Fairy!

Everything about this modernized take on ‘‘Snow White’’ is groan-worthy: The love interest’s name is…Tyler Prince (Matt Long)! The evil ‘‘queen’’ is a sorority president

Gene Page

Dougray Scott, Drew Barrymore, … | Yes, Drew Barrymore’s accent might be a little shaky — but it’s still tough not to be charmed by this ‘‘Cinderella’'-inspired fable, which purports to

Everett Collection

When the best thing about your modernized version of ‘‘Beauty and the Beast’’ is Mary-Kate Olsen as a campy, clearly not high-school-aged teenage witch, you

Takashi Seida

Of all the damsels in the Grimm catalogue, poor, shuttered Rapunzel must be in the most distress. Enter Disney’s proto- Frozen , which sets the

Everett Collection

A weak stab at girl power, via a plucky princess who yearns for adventure?then ends up needing to be saved anyway? Check. Generic CGI beasties?

Warner Bros.

Ponyo | Disney’s last traditionally animated fairy tale doesn’t just switch things up by making the heroine of ‘‘The Frog Prince’’ African-American — it completely changes the

Disney

Turning ‘‘Little Red Riding Hood’’ into a young adult story about sexy werewolves seems like a no-brainer in these post- Twilight times. But no amount

Kimberly French

Ponyo | Master animator Hayao Miyazaki was inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘‘The Little Mermaid’’ while making this whimsical film about a goldfish who yearns to be

Disney

Tarsem Singh’s energetic, candy-colored family comedy aims for post-modern self-awareness, but prizes lush visuals (and corny, corny jokes) over strong storytelling. And come to think

This live action/animated hybrid answers a question every fantasy fan has posed at some point: What would happen if the characters from a classic Disney

Barry Wetcher

Most teen romances are, in some way, variations on the tale of Cindy and her glass slippers — but this mid-aughts misfire takes things a

Warner Bros

Perhaps ‘‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’’ is not, strictly speaking, a fairy tale (it’s a children’s novel rather than a piece of folklore). It is, however,

Everett Collection

Take the Shrek franchise’s kitchen-sink sensibility but leave out the heart, and you’ll get Puss — a muddled mish-mosh of stories and nursery rhymes including

DreamWorks

This Australian drama is a loose adaptation of Yasunari Kawabata’s novella House of the Sleeping Beauties rather than a direct, modernized take on Charles Perrault’s

Wendy McDougall