Ok, National Department Store of Doom and Misery, I surrender.

In a particularly underhanded act Nationwide Mega-Store Hell has yet again shown me that they are too large and too evil to fight.
The preternaturally evil and devious weasels who run this shadowy company pushed back my schedule from 3-11 to 3:30-11:30 at the very last minute giving me an additional hour of nothing to do before work. A mere day after unilaterally declaring to my co-workers that Ever After was the worst non-ironically intended movie ever made, as a “treat” to the workers, Our National Department Store of Ever-Lasting Torture rented a movie to show in the break room. Being the kind souls they are, they looped the film to increase the likelihood that one could view it in its entirety. The sound of Barrymore’s abysmal accent distracted me so badly that I incorrectly filled in 4 sudoku puzzles before giving up and playing Tetris on my phone.
Ever After, showing ALL DAY at your local Vile Department Store of Eternal Damnation, is set in France, where the people all have English accents (the exception being Barrymore). Barrymore, who apparently was rendered so broke from her failed marriage to Tom Green (thanks Canada), that she could not afford the elocution lessons which could have provided her with a moderately non-retched English or even, dare I suggest it, French accent. Although since she lacked the follow-through to hold her own indeterminable accent through an entire sentence, much less an entire scene, I don’t suppose it matters anyway. Beyond the general outlandishness and predictability of the film, Barrymore’s revoltingly horrible accent manages to cause Ever After to out-suck even Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. In the movie’s favor, the writing is not obviously awful, the acting was actually quite good (if one can overlook Barrymore’s acting), and really it’s a quite visually pleasing film. Having Barrymore in it undoubtedly increased the throngs of America’s Top Model Viewing Morons, but killed any possibility of it being a kind of cutsie but overall satisfactory film. Worse yet is the fact that Barrymore’s accent and lack of theatrical uhm… talent manages to render one of the most beloved fairy-tails in the lexicon of frightening children’s stories completely toothless. Gregory Maguire’s Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister managed to rejuvenate Cinderella, so we can’t really blame the story.
While I believe the worst aspect of the movie was Barrymore’s distracting accent, most people at Nationwide Department Store of Unceasing Sorrow found the presence of Leonardo da Vinci in France the most irritating. In a fine twist, the most seemingly outlandish part of the movie is the only realistic part. In 1515 da Vinci was in France under the auspices of King Francis.