Review: "Enchanted" a royal treat


An animated Disney girl becomes a flesh-and-blood sweetheart
in this tongue-in-cheek homage to Disney fairy tales by Disney.

The first two-thirds of "Enchanted" is sweet, charming, almost-perfect, can't-wipe-the-smile-from-your-face fun. Simply put, it's endearing and, well, enchanting.

The movie works on a second level by lovingly evoking Disney's classic canon. "Enchanted" references everything from "Snow White" to "Beauty and the Beast," with gentle satire and sly references (pay attention to little details and character names). Helmer Kevin Lima ("Tarzan," "Enchanted") working with the script by Bill Kelly ("Blast From The Past"), takes traditional Disney fairytale animation and combines it with live action that forms a unique romantic comedy.

Narrated by Julie Andrews ("Mary Poppins"), the fun begins in the classically animated land of Andalasia. There we meet a young woman named Giselle
(Amy Adams, "Junebug"), a sweet innocent who, like Snow White, befriends woodland creatures; shares Belle's taste in gowns, and has Ariel's flowing red hair. She dances about her tree house and sings of a prince who will come and give her "true love's kiss." Her animal friends represent a Who's Who of Disney cartoon creature history: a chipmunk, blue birds, a baby deer, a gray rabbit, an owl, a warthog and more.

This sweet, idealistic beginning is basically a condensed all-too-familiar Disney classic. Giselle falls into danger when a six-storey green troll, drawn by her song, comes around to eat her and is saved by the brave, charming, and somewhat dim Prince Edward (James Marsden, "X-Men").
Having found in each other the one who completes their “heart’s duet,” Giselle and Edward finish the song about the magic of "True Love's Kiss", instantly fall in love and ride off to be "married in the morning!"

But not all is well. Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon, "In the Valley of Elah"),
Edward's wicked stepmother, knows that if he marries, she will lose her throne forever. So Narissa, magically disguised as a crone in black hood and gown, dupes Giselle, on her wedding day, to make a wish at a magical fountain with a sparkling waterfall. As Giselle leans forward to make a wish -- of course, to live happily ever after with her prince -- the crone gives her a shove and the would be princess falls into the fountain and lands in a place "where there are no happily ever afters." Where else but real life midtown Manhattan?

Giselle lands, in of all places, underneath a manhole cover in Times Square.
In classic New Yorker fashion, passers-by give the hoop-skirted belle barely a glance. In no time flat, her tiara is stolen by a homeless man and she's doused by rain, but hope reigns supreme when Giselle spies the 'Palace' she's been searching for (actually the billboard fronting of a run down casino).
That's where she meets divorce attorney and single dad McDreamy -- er Robert (Patrick Dempsey, TV's "Grey's Anatomy") as his young daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey, "Duane Hopwood"), recently denied the fairy tale book she'd asked for, spies a real live Princess asking to be let into the palace.

When Giselle asks for directions to a nearby meadow or hollow tree, Robert reluctantly lets her spend the night on his couch in his SoHo apartment. He finds the act of a good Samaritan difficult to undo and before he knows it his curtains have been turned into frocks
and his singing houseguest is cleaning house. She leans out a window and puts out her signature call: "Aahhh. Aahhh. Aaa -- ahhh."

But rather than cuddly blue jays, squirrels, rabbits, and the like, NYC’s finest urban pests come a running: rats, pigeons, flies, and cockroaches. Though taken aback, Giselle pushes on to make "new friends," orchestrating the clean up of Robert’s apartment with her happy pest cohorts to the tune of a "Happy Working Song" (a spoof on Snow White’s "Whistle While You Work"). As the apartment is tidied, birds get injured and plates are dropped. In the film's most hilariously inspired scene -- helpful cockroaches clean the tub! And at the end, a pigeon eats one of the poor roaches.

Of course, this domesticity
is misinterpreted by Nancy, Robert's girlfriend of five years (Idina Menzel, "Rent"),
who is nonetheless wooed back by a disbelieving Robert with Giselle's advice. And if he's surprised that works, imagine his dilemma when her prince, Edward,
really does arrive, accompanied by Pip, a most 'animated' chipmunk, Giselle’s best animated friend.
Emerging in Times Square with his high boots, puffed shirt, and sharp sword,
he attacks a city bus and refers to everyone as “peasants.”

Giselle and Edward aren’t the only ones to have traveled through the manhole, though. The Queen’s lovestruck lackey, Nathaniel (Timothy Spall, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"),
comes along. Somehow, in an apparently thinly populated Andalasia, Nathaniel kept Edward busy for years with hunting trolls and other adventures, while steering the young prince away from likely maidens. Nathaniel seems surprisingly New York savvy from the start, slipping into disguises, complete with international accents, and Edward is too self-absorbed to notice or care. When the two buy food in a cafeteria and get a motel room, I find myself wondering how they pay for it all? Gold coins?

Unbeknownst to everyone but Pip (who can’t speak anymore, just pantomime) is the fact that Nathaniel is spying for the queen and has orders to give Giselle a poisoned apple. But when Nathaniel fails twice to off Giselle, Narissa herself makes an appearance
-- right in time for the upcoming "Kings and Queens ball."

There's one other thigh-slapper song and dance production: a mock ballad called "That's How You Know," deploying hundreds of performers,
including rollerbladers and a mariachi band, at locations all over Central Park.
During it, Giselle runs up a hill arms outstretched, a la famous shots in "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Sound of Music."

It's a show-stopper in more ways than one, unfortunately.

Director Kevin Lima and credited screenwriter Bill Kelly are hard pressed to maintain the momentum over the next hour or so, which plays out a lot like a clichéd, tune-free Disney Channel movie.

The film tries to recreate "Sleeping Beauty"'s epic confrontation with the evil witch in gloomy, Gothic Forbidden Mountain. Here, Narissa poisons Giselle at the King and Queen ball. But Robert revives Giselle with a kiss just before the clock strikes twelve. The Queen then turns into a fire-breathing, six-storey tall dragon and takes Robert outside with her and up the skyscraper they’re all in. Giselle heads after them -- once she tosses aside her shoes.

The special effect is disconcerting, and not particularly special. It's as if in the final reel, it was decided to give the men something to do. I feel the ball could’ve been another song-and-dance set piece for Giselle, but it was Robert who ended up muttering a few lyrics.
And what exactly was the point of casting Idina Menzel, one of Broadway's leading musical performers, and not giving her anything to sing? Still, until then, the story is a winner. I expect the songs by Alan Menken ("The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast") and Stephen Schwartz (Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame") will be new classics and they're perfectly placed within "Enchanted."

A singer and trained dancer, Amy Adams is pitch perfect as the beautiful Giselle, both animated and live, giving her wide eyed innocence and wonder.
James Marsden plays the self-absorbed and flawless Prince Edward with goofy charm.
Patrick Dempsey has the tough role as the comedy’s straight man but he gives it his best as McDreamy, er -- Robert, a NYC cynical divorce with a buried heart of gold.
If nothing else, it's worth seeing just for the cartoonish performances of Adams and Marsden as the real-life versions of a classic Disney princess and her Prince Charming. Adams owns her character down to the faintest gasp, twirl, and smile, captivating the audience and carrying the film on her shoulders.
I won’t be shocked if she gets an Oscar nomination for this role.

"Enchanted" is fun most of the way, thanks in part to updates of familiar Disney scenes: like poison fruit comes in the form of a vile apple martini and the magic mirror being a motel television. But the film sends mixed messages about love as Adams' princess falls in true love with Dempsey's skeptical modern bachelor.

As Giselle waits for Edward to come for her, she discovers how the real world has a different view of love from fairytale land. She's confused by ideas like "dating"
and how Robert and his girlfriend Nancy could be in love for years but not yet married. Giselle's outright shocked by the idea of divorce, a discovery that drives her to tears. Giselle says, "Separated forever and ever?" when she learns a client of Robert's is divorcing her husband.

Burned by a former love, Robert is a calloused realist in love and unaffected by the divorce he’s overseeing. He views love in a practical, business-like fashion. The polar opposite of Giselle. Over and over, he explains to Giselle that love can't happen in a day, is not magical, and is a commitment that takes work. Giselle's lovey-dovey version of love, he explains bitterly, is mere fantasy. "Many marriages are happy if they just don't end," he says. "Forget happily ever after."

Giselle and Robert's discussions about love are intriguing and well placed in a Disney family movie. After all, Disney is a chief perpetrator of the Hollywood myth of easy, instant and magical love. The kind where fireworks ring out, cartoon birds sing and couples are magically connected in happiness. It's a breath of fresh air to find a movie stressing that love only begins with magical feelings, but from there, it's about choice and commitment. By featuring characters with very different and very incomplete perspectives on love, "Enchanted" is in position to explore what love really means. Giselle and Robert have the opportunity to learn from each other and apply in their respective relationships the truth that successful love needs both real-world commitment and fairyland romance. And for a while, it seems that maybe that's where all the love talk is headed.

Until the two-thirds mark hits.

The climactic scene changes Giselle. She stops singing and loses some of her innocence and joy. And while the film applauds this change as a positive step in her personal growth, it feels sad to me. Giselle is a strong woman, dynamic character, and great role model, one who’ll be the next popular princess in Disney lore, but the real world changes her, and I'm not sure all the changes are actually positive. For her sake, I almost wish Giselle would've stayed in Andalasia. But I guess then I wouldn't have had so much fun seeing her bring a little bit of that world here.

Instead of using Giselle’s and Robert’s relationships to show a realistic and affirming view of love, "Enchanted" sends mixed messages about what love is. It talks a lot about commitment, but chucks commitment out the window. It talks about the need for couples to get to know each other, but instead affirms the idea that true love is something magically discovered nearly immediately. "Enchanted" didn’t define love incorrectly, but left it unclear and confusing. It feels to me like the filmmakers took the easy way out with a crowd-pleasing resolution at the expense of its values and message.

Why wouldn’t Robert warm to Giselle? She’s sunny, has control of woodland creatures through her voice, and can inspire a couple on the verge of divorce to stay together. But what does Robert offer Giselle? A relationship in the real world where more than half of marriages don’t last? What chemistry does Giselle really have with Robert other than the fact that the story mandated her to become a "real woman" who fell in love with a real guy?

Although "Enchanted" doesn't fully take advantage of its unique idea, it's still a hugely entertaining, clever comic fairy tale. But when it ended, I wondered, Is Giselle better off now? What happens two years down the road?