Although released over half a century after Disney's version of "Cinderella", this is a sequel to the popular animated feature from 1950. I don't recall ever watching that particular Disney cartoon from start to finish until just a few months ago, even though I do remember seeing some of it as a kid. I didn't find that film to be the masterpiece many people consider it to be, but thought it was pretty good. I know I've pointed this out before with other films of this kind, but since this is yet another direct-to-video sequel from Disney (some of these are sequels to recent films from the company, while others are sequels to ones produced by Walt Disney himself decades earlier, and this is one of the latter), its mediocrity is not surprising.
The Fairy Godmother helps the mice make a new book about Cinderella, featuring three stories taking place after the events of the first one. The first of these stories is "Aim to Please", in which Cinderella and Prince Charming return from their honeymoon. The prince is then forced to leave with his father, and while they are away, a woman named Prudence is left to teach Cinderella how to be a princess and put her in charge of an upcoming banquet, but the new princess does not like what she learns. In the second story, "Tall Tail", Jaq the mouse feels he can't be of any help to Cinderella due to his small size and decides he would rather be a human, but this may not work out as he expected. Finally, in "An Uncommon Romance", Cinderella's stepsister, Anastasia, falls in love with a baker, but he is a commoner, so her mother and sister Drizella do not approve. Cinderella begins to help her stepsister try to win this baker's heart, but the two of them don't exactly see eye to eye on how to do this.
One thing these direct-to-video Disney sequels are good at is having inferior comic relief to their theatrical predecessors, and "Cinderella II: Dreams Come True" is no exception. I didn't even care much for the mice in the original movie, but still found some laugh-out-loud moments. However, I found none of those in this MUCH later sequel. In fact, I hardly even smiled while watching this one. The three stories are not among the most boring I've ever seen in a movie, but they're usually not too interesting. I'm sure they are entertaining to many kids, but are perhaps a little too simple to really have much entertainment value for adult viewers. If each of these segments featured lots of good humour in them to make viewers laugh, it could have made a major difference, but that's unfortunately nowhere near the case. The four songs sung by Brooke Allison don't help with the entertainment value, either. Some good traditional animation is featured here, with some nice, colourful backgrounds, but this is certainly not enough to make up for the significant problems this sequel suffers from.
Having previously seen "Belle's Magical World", the second direct-to-video release featuring the characters from Disney's hit 1991 adaptation of "Beauty and the Beast", this "Cinderella" sequel naturally reminded me of that film. Both feature three different short stories (the DVD version of the former features four, but I've only seen the VHS version and don't intend to watch that third installment in the "Beauty and the Beast" trilogy again in ANY format), all of which have life lessons in them. Since I watched "Cinderella II: Dreams Come True" about three years after seeing Disney's third "Beauty and the Beast" release, comparing them may not be as easy, but at least I can say this "Cinderella" film has better animation, and I didn't find the stories to be QUITE as dull as the ones in the other mentioned direct-to-video release, so I guess this one is slightly superior. However, that's not saying much.
