"Cinderella" is a $12 million trifle: sweet, light, and not as deep as some cartoons.

Indeed, the third version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's TV musical looks very much like one of Disney's animated hits.

"Moesha's" Brandy could have been the model for Disney's animated "Pocahontas." The Prince (Paolo Montalban of "The King & I") could have skipped right off any Broadway chorus line to be the Disney hero, who preferably is blander than his heroine and sidekicks.

Jason Alexander is unable to spin much magic out of his role as the valet who announces in a new production number that "The Prince Is Having a Ball." Whoopi Goldberg, however, "eeks" out lots of fun as the Queen Mum.

That she is black and the King (Victor Garber) is quite white is never mentioned, because this is a rainbow cast in which Cinderella's comically cruel stepmother (Bernadette Peters) and twittery stepsister (Veanne Cox) are white, while the itchy stepsister (Natalie Desselle) is black.

They live in a land of Klimtian flatness and and Seussian shapes and voiceover hamminess.

Fairy Godmother Whitney Houston turns a pumpkin into a coach, mice into horses, and Cinderella into a girl self-determined to do more than dream.

Three songs from other Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals - "The Sweetest Sounds," "Falling in Love With Love" and "There's Music in You" - are woven into the score of the team's only TV production.

Brandy does a passable waltz in a drably imagined ballroom sequence and is a more approachable Cinderella than Julie Andrews (1957) or Lesley Ann Warren (1965).