Once Upon a Crime

First of all the actors were all great. They were trying so hard to sell it, especially the older ones going ham on their roles trying to turn it into a cartoon/anime.

The wardrobe deserves a shout out, everything on screen was beautiful and unique.

Then you have the actual plot and execution. This... this is insulting even at a child's level, it's beyond just bad. Execution wise there is way too much dead space in the shots that the movie feels empty most of the time. Shots linger far too long on the actors doing nothing that it just comes off as awkward.

The twist at the end was a fun one. It just didn't makes sense within context.

It had potential, I like the cartoonish sense of humor, but it needed better writing and a decent editor.

This one is a twisted take on Cinderella and Red Riding Hood fairytales, with a detective true crime story.

It is quite a weird one I must say, full of these deadpan attempts to be funny and ending up not being funny at all- but it's still enjoyable for no good reason.

One huge plus though, the creativity in this is immense. The COSTUMES, let me tell you, those costumes are STUNNING, and the color of the movie is just a feast to the eyes!

I would say to watch this one if you have nothing better to do, but want to watch something easy and comfortable. No search for deeper meanings, no explosion- just comfort and lightness. But isn't that something we all need once in a while?

I admitted that I didn't finish the movie. There might be some interesting plot twists waiting ahead, but I felt from the beginning that it looks like fantasy that looks like a farce in costume, or a comedy that isn't even funny. The voice and action of the witch character was extremely annoying. Cinderella and red-hood girl exchanged some boring scripts. Then another annoying character popped up, looking like an angel or something. I couldn't stand watching it anymore. It's boring and isn't funny or interesting in anyway. The costume looks fancy alright but that doesn't enough to get me through. So I just write my experience and opinion as being from someone who couldn't manage to watch this movie to the end.

I don't know why a lot of people hated it. I think it's funny and enjoyable.

Of course it's not your common disney cinderella/red riding hood story, it's combined with crime and mystery genre, so it's gonna be a different story. So for a fanatic fan of cinderella/red riding hood, i bet they hated it.

For me it's enjoyable, they cgi and costume and vfx is amazing, im amazed the whole show, and of course all the girls are very kawaii, and at the end there's a lot of plot twist that shocks me.

Of course it's not all that great, there's some minus too, like they drag the story too long in the middle trying to find the murder even though i think the detective already know who the murderer is, and at the end I think the murderer isn't at fault, of course she murder someone, but it was a self defense.

This is... wild. 'Once Upon A Crime (2023)' is a spin on the classic Cinderella tale that asks the age old question: "what if Red Riding Hood was in this and she was a detective who became involved in uncovering the truth behind the murder of a royal hairdresser?". Just a classic "what if?" situation, really. What starts out feeling like it's for five-year-old children soon takes a bit of a (seemingly unintentional) turn as it tosses a dead body into the mix and just keeps getting more sinister from there. It's not as if it ever switches gears entirely into grown-up territory, but it definitely starts to veer away from what initially seems to be its target audience (while, at the same time, kind of playing exclusively to it).

The whodunnit is a colourful, camp pantomime that lacks any real semblance of cinema and feels as though it belongs on a cheap kids channel but is also kind of weirdly awesome in its own way. It's essentially the wildest case Phoenix Wright never took on, feeling like a JRPG in the best ways possible. Honestly, I kind of like a lot of it. It's never exactly good in any real sense of the word, but it undeniably has this strangely compelling quality that keeps you floating in the space between bemusement and boredom for its majority. If you take it for what it is, there's some genuine - if slight - enjoyment to be had.

And then there's the ending. I don't really want to spoil anything - well I do, but I don't think I should - so all I'll say is that it wraps up in an incredibly frustrating way and treats a particular like absolute dirt even as it establishes that they didn't really do anything wrong (mistakes were made, sure, but the lack of sympathy here is appalling) and that they're every bit as poorly treated yet genuinely lovely as they first appear to be (even though they did something bad, they clearly aren't a bad person). It just leaves an awful taste in your mouth because you can tell the movie itself doesn't think it's doing anyone a disservice, which further reinforces the implication that the story's classist messaging isn't exactly an accident (even if its meek final moments seem to be an effort to prove that it's actually against the classist attitudes its characters hold). The ending drops the ball so badly that it actively affects how I rate the overall movie.

Ultimately, although there is some fun to be had here and there, this is a bizarre and generally quite bad picture that totally botches its ending. I must say, though, that its fairy tale costuming is absolutely heavenly.