And we’re back…oh, I’m sorry! I seem to have put on a Tom & Jerry cartoon by mistake. -checks DVD- nope, still Cinderella. What the…?
Oh, that’s right. We’ve got to pad this thing out to 75 minutes. Very well, then.
Jaq squirts Lucifer in the eye with the milk after his dunking and leads him to a mouse hole in the wall, where the cat tries cornering him. Now that he’s distracted, the other mice run outside and get their breakfast of corn from Cindy. Gus loses his to the chickens, so Cindy gives him a whole pile to carry back. Bad idea, that. He drops them on the kitchen floor, and his efforts to pick them all up get Lucifer’s attention. Not even Jaq pulling out one of his whiskers can dissuade him. Knocking a broom on him does, though.
Gus escapes and climbs up onto the table, where Lucifer traps him under a teacup. Luckily, he’s saved by the bell. Literally. On the wall are three bells used by the Tremaines to summon Cinderella, and one of them is ringing like crazy. "CINDERELLA!" one of the stepsisters screams.
"Alright, alright, I’m coming," Cinderella calls back, far too quietly to actually be heard. "Oh my goodness. Morning, noon and night." All three of the bells are ringing by the time she finishes getting the family’s breakfast together, and she heads back upstairs with a tray in each arm and one on her head. Gus is still under the teacup, which Lucifer doesn’t fail to notice. Too bad it’s on one of the trays.
Lucifer follow Cindy upstairs and tries to follow her into the Tremaines’ rooms as she delivers the trays and gets a bag of laundry in return. However, the door is shut in his face each time. He doesn’t have to wait long, though, because one of the sisters starts screaming. “Oh, Mother! MOTHER!”
Out comes Anastasia, a cartoonish redhead. “She put it there!” she shouts upon running into Cindy. “A big, ugly mouse under my teacup!”
All the noise attracts her sister, the equally cartoonish brunette Drizella. “Now what did you do?” she snaps at Cindy before she and Anastasia go into their mother’s room to complain.
Cindy finds Lucifer, who has Gus under his paw, and makes the cat set him free. “Oh, Lucifer, will you ever learn?”
"Cinderella!" Lady Tremaine calls from the bedroom. The stepsister flank the door, whispering about how Cinderella’s gonna get it good as she passes. "Close the door, Cinderella." Cindy does so, leaving the room in darkness.
Up to this point, Lady Tremaine has been mostly in shadow. Now she appears, looking gaunt, no-nonsense and just a bit sociopathic.
Cindy makes the mistake of trying to reason with this creature. “Oh, please, you don’t really think I — “
"Hold your tongue! Now, it seems that we have time for — "
"But I was only trying to — "
"Silence! Time for vicious practical jokes. Perhaps we can put it to better use. Now let’s see…" She proceeds to make an insanely long list of chores for Cindy, punctuating each with a harsh command. "There’s the large carpet in the main hall. Clean it! And the windows, upstairs and down. Wash them! Oh yes, and the tapestries and the draperies."
"But I just finished — "
"Do them again!" After many more things, she finishes it up with what will surely be the worst task of all; "See that Lucifer gets his bath."
Lucifer, who has snuggled up next to her, thinks about as highly of this as I do. He makes a face as the screen goes black.
One fade in later, we’re off to the castle! Oh, this should be interesting! Surely a peaceful prosperous kingdom like this one would have a ruler who’s wise, just and…
…has a penchant for tossing his crown through glass windows. Like I said, interesting.
"No buts about it!" the king shouts as he destroys his office. "My son has been avoiding his responsibilities long enough! It’s high time he married and settled down."
Trying to avoid the worst of his wrath is the Grand Duke, who probably would have been played by Peter Sellers had this been live-action and made in the 60s. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he says as he peeks out from behind a piece of furniture, “but we must be patient — “
"I AM PATIENT!" Uh, sire? I think that newly shattered inkwell would like to disagree.
He’s got his reasons, though. He’s not getting any younger he says, and he wants to see his grandkids before he passes. It’s been awfully lonely in the palace since the prince grew up, and it’d be nice to have someone to love and play with again. An admirable aspiration, but I’m still not completely sure how smart it would be to let this guy loose around small children.
The Duke suggests leaving the boy alone and allowing love to take its course, but His Highness won’t be having any of that. “Love! Ha! Just a boy meeting a girl under the right conditions. So we’re arranging the conditions!” The prince is coming back from a trip that evening, and they’re going to celebrate the occasion with a ball. A ball that every eligible maiden in the kingdom will just so happen to be attending. “Soft lights, romantic music, all the trimmings! It can’t possibly fail, can it?”
The Duke tries to protest and gets stuck inside a knight’s helmet for his trouble. “Y-Yes, Sire…N-No, Sire! Very well, Sire. I shall arrange the ball for — “
"Tonight! And see that every eligible maid is there. Understand?”
"Yes, Your Majesty," says the Duke, putting his monocle back in. As much as he can while stuck in the helmet, anyway.
Back at the chateau, Lady Tremaine is giving her daughters a music lesson. Anastasia plays the flute while Drizella sings. The song is called “Sing, Sweet Nightingale,” but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that even Lucifer can’t stand the performance. He leaves the room, and we get more proof of what a wonderful human being Cindy is by hearing her sing it much better while cleaning the floor.
This is a short and fairly pointless sequences. It’s just singing and colorful bubbles, and it gets cut off when Lucifer uses the dust Cindy had swept up to make tracks all over the floor. “Oh, Lucifer! You mean old thing!” Cindy exclaims. “I’m just going to have to teach you a lesson.” She picks up her broom and is preparing to go and beat the snot out of Lucifer when there’s a knock at the door. It’s the Royal Postman, carrying an urgent message from the king. Cindy takes it upstairs to show the family, whose lesson has already devolved into chaos and hypocrisy about self-control.
Lady Tremaine starts to chew Cindy out when she enters. “I’ve warned you never to interrupt while — “
"But this just arrived from the palace," she says, presenting the letter.
Anastasia and Drizella snatch it away and nearly tear it apart trying to get it open, so their mother takes it and reads it aloud. They’re quite excited by the news; after all, they’re sooo eligible.
"Why, that means I can go too!" Cindy adds.
The sisters find the mere thought of this uproariously funny. “Ha! Her, dancing with the Prince! I’d be honored, Your Highness. Would you mind holding my broom?”
Cindy, however, is adamant. They’ll be going against a royal decree if they don’t let her attend. To the stepsisters’ shock, Lady Tremaine goes along with it. Of course she can go, if she gets all her work done and can find something to wear.
Cindy is equally surprised, but in the good way. “Oh, thank you, stepmother!” she says as she leaves.
Well, I see absolutely no way this could go traumatically wrong in the next few seconds. In the next fifteen minutes? Now that’s a little more likely.
