A terrific opportunity wasted

Rating: 5/10 (25 November 2007)

It's too bad; I was really looking forward to this movie based on the trailer. Sadly, all of the best laughs in the movie were *in* the trailer, so that was more than a little bit disappointing. I won't rehash the plot, as many others have, but I'd like to comment on a couple of things in the movie that had me scratching my head... first, if Giselle has magical powers and the ability to communicate with animals in the "cartoon" world as well as the "real' world, why limit her powers to cleaning rooms... why couldn't she summon a swarm of pigeons, bees and the like to defeat the dragon? Maybe I'm over analyzing, but the action on the top of the skyscraper was really lame -- quite an anti-climax.
The second point has been alluded to before, but it bears repeating... the assumption that money solves all problems (even worse... a *credit card* solves them). The shopping montage was really offensive, and a terrible message to send to children.
Amy Adams did a wonderful job, and James Marsden was very good as well, but there wasn't enough there to merit a recommendation. The negatives stood out too much.