A perfect title for the best Disney musical in years

Rating: 9/10 (25 July 2009)

Giselle is a simple girl living in a cottage in the middle of the woods in the beautiful country of Andalasia, where she is friends with all the furry little animals who come and joyfully help her keep her cozy little home neat and tidy. One day the handsome, brave and rather stupid Prince Edward comes across her as he's engaged in his favorite activity, troll-hunting, and after saving her the two immediately fall in love. But alas, Edward's stepmother, Queen Narissa, has other designs - she doesn't want Edward to ever marry and have a child to take away her throne, and so when Giselle comes to the palace to marry, the Queen tricks her into falling down a deep well, eventually to land in....Times Square. And to leave the world of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty-style 50s Disney animation and enter the world of "reality." Kevin Lima's film attempts to walk an almost impossible tightrope - being a film that is both a parody of the traditional fairytale-animated film that has been Disney's bread-and-butter for 70 years, yet also holding onto the fairytale charm and warmth amidst the mockery. Somehow, he comes very close to perfection. No small part of this is due to the absolutely radiant presence of Amy Adams as the real-life Giselle, walking, dancing and (wonderfully) singing her way into the home of divorce lawyer and single father Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and his young daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey) - who of course believes that the princess is everything she in fact turns out to be, while daddy takes a little while longer to accept this mad, magical girl.
Life is further complicated when our handsome prince (James Marsden) appears on the scene as well to rescue Giselle and take her back to Andalasia to wed. By the time he finds her though, Giselle has started to learn that our reality is as interesting and wonderful as - if far less simple than - her cartoon homeland and when the evil queen (Susan Sarandon) finally makes an appearance in the flesh, it's clear that Giselle's human mind has started to dominate her animated heart.
I haven't experienced so much sheer joy and delight in a film in a long time; why oh why did I miss this in the theater? Adams is spectacular, funny and naive but so utterly convincing and "real" in her "unreality" - she really feels like an alien being through the first 2/3 of the film, so solid and literal and deliberately one-dimensional, and it makes her eventual transformation into a more real woman all the more special. Her songs are mostly wonderful - "Happy Working Song" is the best movie song I've heard in a decade at least - and the rest of the cast is more than solid. It's got all the adventure and thrills that the best of the Disney classics had, with loads of references both subtle and overt to such films as Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and especially Snow White, but it never feels particularly derivative or lacking in enthusiasm and verve despite all the cobbling it does from other sources. The soundtrack is mostly terrific, the choreography solid, the animation makes me long for the return of traditional Disney pen-and-ink work. I had a feeling I'd like it, but I didn't expect anything this excellent. If there's a flaw, it's that the ending feels a little too rushed, and some of the CGI just looks a bit weak compared to the traditional animation. But these are small issues, and I suspect I'll like this even more on a second viewing. Just wonderful.