Once Upon A Time

Although, in the cinema, sequels are loathed by many, there's no doubt that kids adore them. Children always want to know what happened next, and it makes “they all lived happily ever after” an innately unsatisfying ending. So the monsters are defeated and the prince and princess marry, but what then?

Dorothy (Amy Burke) is a popular children's televsion show presenter who reads stories to children every day. Today, Dorothy doesn't quite seem lke herself. The story is a little different. It's when she shows us a photograph of he beautiful princess – herself – that the floor manager gets visibly nervous. Dorothy wants to tell us about what happened when the handsome prince turned out to be an evil ogre, and what the princess did next.

It's a nice idea but, at four minutes, this film is just a little too long to sustain itself with one joke and not much else. Though kids' TV presenters naturally need to emphasise their words more than most people, Burke still over-eggs it, so pushy from the outset that she has nowhere to take her performance as the story develops. The result is a film that very quickly becomes trying to watch. What might have been sinister is lost beneath the ham and the tension between horror and comedy is lost. Director Collins has missed the fact that it's all in how you tell 'em.