How enchanting is it?

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2010)

"Enchanted" pulls off an interesting duality. It deftly and entertainingly punctures the twee conventions of one heavily-genrefied type of film with one hand, while with the other it drives full-speed into the conventions of another. While the parody of the children's fairytale cartoon is effective and very funny in its own right, it also casts a bit of ironic, non-normative light on the "romcom" clichés that "Enchanted" simultaneously engages in.
It's a very witty movie with a clever script, and more than the requisite number of funny lines and situations are drawn from the innocent-abroad conceit of a cartoon fairytale princess (and, secondarily, prince and villainous lackey) transplanted into a complex modern world. The wit of the script is complemented and in many senses the film is really made by a very good lead performance from Amy Adams as Giselle, who has superb comic timing and does an excellent job of treading a difficult line -- giving her character the requisite level of exaggerated innocence and saccharinity while keeping the character well- rounded well-rounded, interesting, and likable enough to carry the film.
The musical numbers as well are very well done -- fully-fledged large- scale production numbers admirable in their own right and as clever as the rest of the script in their contrasting of old-fashioned over-the- top musical styling with real-word cynicisms and banalities.
When that same real-world resolves with a storybook ending all'round, the film succeeds in being as sweet as it likes, but something doesn't settle right in terms of tone and the stability of the worlds that have been established. On the whole, though, the film is pulled off with a lot of panache and a well-written script that does its concept justice.