Once Upon a Crime

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.

Little Red Riding Hood (Kanna Hashimoto), an adventurous and inquisitive girl, sets off on a journey to enrich her life. She meets a bedraggled girl who introduces herself as Cinderella (Yûko Araki). Little Red Riding Hood goes to the ball with her. She also helps authorities uncover a mystery or two.

Those who think this is just another take on an oft-repeated tale, think again. The story is very daring, turning as beloved a fairytale as Cinderella on its head. I bet you would not expect what happens in the end. Question every scene and see if you can find clues along the way.

I actually liked it. Mysteries and twists always entertain when they are plausible. And the story makes them so.

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.

TLDR: Its basically a japanese murder mystery drama told through a lot of narrative, with a fairy tale backdrop.

I love the name "Once upon a crime" so I had to dive in. While I'm not generally a fan of grim/fairy tales in general (even if told is some edgy new-age way), I gave this one a chance because honestly, I had nothing else to watch.

I was pleasantly surprise the spin they took on the 'Cinderella' story. The ending genuinely surprised me. You have your expectations of how these stories will end (both the fairy tale and the murder mystery), but this one had a decently good twist to it. Definitely something to watch if you're into Japanese type murder drama. Probably not something that would fly too well with American audiences.

Its fun, its whimsical, its different. Its okay.

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.