Good news, everyone! We’ve been keeping score and today, with the release of Alyce Tzue and John Ripa’s “Steps,” it’s official: There are more revisionist fairy tales than so-called “real” ones.
It’s ironic, if you think about it. There are so many children’s films about poking fun at the tales of the Brothers Grimm – and while we’re at it, Aesop’s Fables abound – working with the formula is now the formula. It’s no shock when the “Sleeping Beauty” villain gets her own lucrative movie franchise, and it’s no surprise when Hansel and Gretel become kick-ass witch hunters. Kenneth Branagh played it pretty straight when he remade Disney’s “Cinderella” in 2015, but even that movie recognized that “wicked stepmother” is a one-dimensional concept, and falling in love in seconds isn’t what one considers love.
You’d be hard-pressed to find any classic fairy tale that doesn’t need at least a little reinvention to be relevant to today’s audiences, and since those stories, themselves, have been constantly changing over time, no one can claim that movies like “Steps” are an aberration. Fairy tales are just what they are these days, and “Steps,” a lively, funny and character-driven new take on “Cinderella,” proves we’re better off for it.
“Steps” begins with Lilith (Ali Wong), Cinderella’s so-called “evil” step-sister, telling the audience that the original story was a smear campaign. In reality, Lilith and her little sister Margot (Stephanie Hsu), along with their mother, were East Asian immigrants, and their bad reputation was fueled by racism and classism.
When they meet their new step-sister Cinderella (Amanda Seyfried), she is a very kind young girl who likes to clean the house and talk to animals, and they immediately take a shine to each other. But a tragic incident happens early on, Cinderella chooses to side with the popular children over her steps, and a gap develops. It only gets bigger when the father dies and the town completely turns on Lilith’s side of the family. Poor Cinderella, everyone says, to live with these monsters.
So Lilith does what any teenager would do: She goes to Hot Topic. Or, since Hot Topic hasn’t been invented yet, it’s probably more accurate to say she’s creating Hot Topic. She is ahead of her time, so no one notices that she is a complete style icon, but she embraces her outside status and makes it her complete identity.
It takes a lot of effort to get the plot going, but in short: Lilith is furious when she finds out that Cinderella has a Fairy (Bette Midler), so she steals the Fairy’s wand and sends out magical invitations to the royal ball. Lilith and Margot also get fancy new dresses and a wicked Skulltula vehicle. They crash the party and just when they were having fun, and just when Cinderella was about to hook up with the Prince (Daniel Radcliffe), an evil socialite named Priscilla (Nikki Glaser) steals the wand, steals the prince, turns Margot into a frog, and forces her creepy butler Roderick (Peter Dinklage) to kill the royal sisters.
There are a lot of things in “Steps” that don’t quite work. It’s a bit hypocritical to tell a story where all the women we hated turn out to be decent people, only to shift all the blame to another evil cartoon villain. When we find out why the Fairy went to this trouble in the first place, it creates a mountain of plot problems, many of which remain unresolved at the end of the film. Even Lilith’s opening monologue stops making sense, because after the way things turned out, there’s no reason why the supposedly inaccurate original “Cinderella” story wouldn’t have been told in the first place.
You can say “it’s just a kids’ movie” all you want, but that’s always an excuse for lazy writing, and deep down, the people know “it’s just a kids’ movie. Fortunately, despite its faults (ha!), “Steps” is a great kids’ movie, with rich characters and a great imagination.
The movie even includes a clever reason why the prince can’t recognize Cinderella after his clothes are magically changed into rags. Good luck finding a better explanation in any of the other iterations. So I congratulate the seven distinguished screenwriters of the film; for once, too many cooks didn’t spoil the soup.
“Steps” sends Lilith, Margot and Cinderella on many adventures on their way to saving the kingdom, and they are all exciting and fun. Better yet, they all give the sisters plenty of opportunity to reveal themselves and consider the mistakes they’ve made. A simpler, drabber movie would have made Cinderella the bad guy but she’s a great person with good intentions, and when she realizes that the one time she let her guard down and it wasn’t nice to everyone, she had a lifelong, shattering impact. Everyone cracks but at least everyone, except Priscilla, seems to be trying.
The animation in “Steps” is professional, if not always amazing, but the storytelling is efficient and effective, and sometimes the designs are beautiful and/or strange. So while nothing about Alyce Tzue and John Ripa is particularly modern, including and especially his attempts to be modern, there is nothing wrong with either. The plot is silly, but guess what, so was the “Cinderella” plot in the first place. People living in glass houses should not throw stones. (And people who wear glass slippers should invest in more comfortable shoes.)
“Steps” premieres on Netflix on November 20, 2026.
