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A Right Royal Pain

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  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Applying Adaptational Villainy to the miller's daughter is amusing in light of Once Upon a Time (2011) doing the same thing, where she also turns out to be the mother of another fairy tale character, though in that the evil queen from Snow White.
  • Hollywood Homely: It's written into the story. Rumpelstiltskin was kicked out of the fairy world for supposedly being too ugly, but the illustrations show him looking perfectly normal. When he later encounters a woman who he thinks is pretty, despite her being kicked out for the same reason, he starts to think maybe he wasn't so bad.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Melanie is a rotten person but you can't help but sympathise with her when she ends up at risk of losing her head over lies her father told. She was also happy to give her daughter up, but the king who was going to chop her head off demands her back, so that probably wasn't too pleasant for her either.
  • Older Than They Think: Several plot points that would later be used in other more famous fairy tale films and shows are used here.
    • The monster or villain from the story is just an outcast shunned by the rest of the world for being ugly, and ends up involved in the plot while helping a Jerkass - five years before Shrek 1. The book it was based on had been around for six years already, but the film is a very loose adaptation.
    • Making the king from Sleeping Beauty an Adaptational Jerkass and the evil fairy somewhat justified in enacting the curse? Maleficent would do the same thing.
    • Having Rumpelstiltskin be the caregiver for a beautiful brown-haired girl named Beauty who serves as a Morality Pet? Once Upon a Time (2011) did that too, though it was Belle from Beauty and the Beast and they were lovers rather than father and daughter.
  • The Woobie: Rummy through and through. Shunned by the world for being too ugly and having to live on the outskirts of town. He helps a spoiled brat out of the goodness of his heart and gets two nice years with a baby daughter he loves...and has to give her up too. Then he gets labelled the bad guy. He thankfully gets a happy ending though.

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