Bearably Cute

Rating: 7/10 (1 December 2007)

My friends and I are big Disney fanatics, so we went to see Enchanted with open minds.
The movie's playful satire of the age of classic Disney animation is the best part. Even the title is written in the Gothic style shown in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The animation and score (composed by Alan Menken...see The Lion King and numerous other 90s Disney movies) are simply the icing on the cake at the beginning. In the animation world the kids will be entertained and the teenagers and adults will chortle as they remember the overly-enthusiastic naiveness of the protagonists of early Disney films.
Giselle (played superbly by Amy Adams...this woman walks, sits down, does EVERYTHING in character. The innocent vitality she has for life at the beginning of the movie never wavers even when she experiences reality) is super excited to get married to her cliché Prince Charming (James Marsden, also wonderful. His range is incredible...I still can't believe he is also Cyclops and Corny Collins). Conveniently, Charming rides up on his white horse and saves her from a troll, and upon meeting her for the first time decides to get married the next day. But alas, the evil queen(Susan Saradon, who has a regrettably short part so I can't comment on her performance) knows that once Charming, her stepson, marries Giselle she will have to give up her throne to her stepdaughter. So she decides to trick her into a play "where there are no happily ever afters" by way of a magic well.
Patrick Dempsey plays a lawyer who grows skeptical of the subtle fantasy of living thanks to his own corroding marriage, but thankfully he meets Giselle who reminds him (through turning a daily stroll through Central Park into a musical Howard Ashman would be proud of) of the Disney magic in everyone! The movie is rather cute, but the singing and the happiness and the flowers get annoying (although still bearable) after about an hour. The score is better than the forgettable script...the jokes come from the performances, not the writing. I was mostly disappointed in the holes in the plot. Events that shouldn't have happened in reality were never explained (how did the queen's henchman keep disguising himself? How was Giselle able to swing herself up on a building after the queen?)...I know the movie's supposed to be a fantasy but the screenwriters should not completely alter the rules of reality when the point is to show the differences between the real and animated world.
The script is the biggest flaw. Frankly I think the cinematography could have been better too, especially in Giselle's scenes (more sweeping tracking shots of the scenery would have maintained the realism of the fantasy). But whatever. It wasn't a waste of a movie. Take the kids, and Disney fanatics will appreciate the attempt to recreate the classic animation age...but will notice some elements missing that makes this movie feel like it has less heart than it advertises.