Enchanted is a nice parody/tribute to fairy tales from Walt Disney Pictures

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2007)

Walt Disney Pictures' original animated/live-action musical comedy Enchanted is a mostly wonderful tribute/parody of various fairy tale films that made the company the most enchanting for family entertainment. Amy Adams is simply luminous as Giselle, the maiden who finds herself caught between James Marsden's Prince Edward from her animated life and Patrick Dempsey's Robert Phillip in the real New York one. Also featuring Susan Sarandon as the evil Queen Narissa and Timothy Spall as Nathaniel, her henchman. Then there's the chipmunk Pip, voiced by Jeff Bennett in Andalasia and the director Kevin Lima in New York when Pip can only communicate in chipmunk sounds. Finally, there's Idina Menzel as Robert's fiancée, Nancy, and six-year-old Rachel Covey as his daughter, Morgan. All players I've mentioned contribute wonderfully to this movie that lives up to its title. My favorite sequences, however, both involve Giselle when she sings her heart out in New York. The first involves when she calls to some animals to help clean Robert's apartment when he's gone and many of them are rats and roaches! Then at Central Park when she starts singing to Robert about finding true love, he at first tells her to just keep walking then she encounters some Calypso musicians and they start joining in and then just everyone within walking distance do the same. Well, except Robert who insists he can't sing or dance! The songs by Disney veterans Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz move along at a breezy pace. Also nice to see previous animated Disney princesses Jodi Benson (Ariel), Paige O'Hara (Belle), and Judy Kuhn (Pocohantas) make cameo appearances and to hear Julie Andrews herself narrate. All in all, Enchanted is another Disney movie that should be entertaining enough for all ages who want that feel-good happy ending with some clever satire that makes, in the words of Andrews' Mary Poppins character from that Disney picture, "the medicine go down".