ONCE UPON A TIME is a West German fairytale compilation heavily indebted to the Walt Disney classics of old. It suffers from a real cheapness in terms of look and tone, with crude animation throughout and animated characters who are more than a little unpleasant. The version I saw, available for showing on Amazon Prime, suffered from having a typically blunt American dub job which took away any nuance that might have once existed. The plot is original but a bizarre mix of the most famous fairy tales of old, with elements of the Cinderella story popping up regularly.

This movie was such a bit part of my childhood. I saw it for the first time when I was 4 or 5, when I didn't quite understand English. Fortunatley there were Swedish subtitles! Watched it on a recorded VHS at least once a day for several years and was devastated when our VHS-player broke down. LUCKILY I recently found it to have been released on DVD so I bought two copies via Amazon. One for me and one for my sis, cause I know she loves this movie as much as I do.It's kind of a Cinderella tale. A girl, Maria, lives with her widowed father. He re-marries and get's a nasty bonus daughter. Maria receives a present from the prince and he wants to marry her. the nasty step daughter does everything in her power to stop that from happening and to marry the prince herself.

I was doing laundry one day and all of a sudden I had a flashback of watching this movie about a beautiful young woman who has a horrible stepsister and stepmother, the girl meets and falls in love with a handsome prince, the girl and her stepsister fall into a well and enter this magical world where they are tested of their heart. There are crying little babies who are hungry and it is the beautiful young girl that proves to be the most kind and the most maternal. I remember seeing this movie when I was four maybe five years old during the mid eighties and I fell in love with it! I used to watch the movie over and over again...but it is nowhere to be found! There has to be a copy somewhere out there!

This was my favorite movie growing up, and I would love to see it again. Even though I cannot speak German, I am very tempted to buy the VHS tape in German (Der Zauberstein). There is still a line from this movie that my family quotes to each other when we do something exceptionally dumb ("The stone is not right, the girl is not bright.") I hope that one day I can share this movie with my children.