Starts off with promise, but falls short with the ending

Rating: 5/10 (3 December 2010)

My review is very full of spoilers for those that haven't seen it.
The movie starts out like a typical Disney princess tale, but quickly takes an interesting twist for a Disney movie - jumping to live action. And not just any live action, gritty New York. I'm hooked so far, fish-out-of-water, I'm buying it.
We meet the incredibly self-absorbed Patrick Dempsey, and Amy Adams learns what life is like in the real world. It's growth; it's interesting. Also, I loved the musical number "That's How You Know".
Skip to the end. Amy Adams is now in love with Patrick Dempsey, and the other two (Nancy and Edward, I believe) run off together. This ending seems to work for most people, I guess, considering the 7.5 rating and the many 10 star reviews I saw at a glance. It doesn't really work for me, however.
What's the moral of the story here? Make sure you know who you get to know the person before falling in love with them? I can work with that, but Amy's character and the Edward character believed they were in true love before coming to the real world, and then it turns out they weren't really in love at all. Does that mean I need to go back and reevaluate all Disney movies? How well do any of the princesses know their princes? What this movie says to me is that "Happily Ever After" is a sham for people who aren't especially self-aware. Prince Charmings are a load of fictional baloney not to be believed in. You should settle for the sad, angry, jaded, single father because true love is a myth. It's just short of retracting every Disney princess movie.
I'm sorry, but I just can't get into that. Little girls shouldn't aspire to be princesses? You can't live the dream because dreams aren't real? Yes, real life can be gritty and cold, and sometimes in life people are forced to settle. Now, not only does a Disney princess not get the Prince, but she shouldn't even want him anyway.