Movie review: Enchanted

by Alex Bentley

The idea is so deceptively simple that it’s a wonder that it’s never been done before: Take a cartoon princess, deposit her in the real world (okay, real movie world), let hilarity ensue. Of course, the most likely reason it’s never been done before is that Disney has all-but-cornered the market on cartoon princesses, and thus any attempt to play off of that by another studio would seem derivative.

Enchanted isn’t really breaking any new ground beyond that, though. The idea of blending animation and live action has been around since…well, almost since film began (see 1914’s Gertie the Dinosaur). In Enchanted, though, the animation and live action are strictly delineated – characters pass through a portal from the animated world to the live action world (and back). Likewise, putting a twist on the whole “princess waiting for her Prince Charming” is squarely in Shrek’s territory. However, that was a rival studio taking wholesale potshots at Disney – funny, yes, but there’s just a different feeling when Disney decides to make fun of themselves.

Enchanted lays the princess movie clichés on thick and heavy during the first (animated) segment of the film, showing Giselle (Amy Adams) using the magic of song to communicate with every animal in her immediate area, followed rapid fire by her pining over and then literally falling for Prince Edward (James Marsden). But Edward’s wicked stepmother, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), will have none of it and plots to stop the pair’s whirlwind romance. In the first of many direct Disney references, Narissa transforms herself into an old hunchbacked hag who’s a dead ringer for the Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Naturally, she tricks Giselle into falling down a magical wishing well that leads … straight to a manhole in Times Square. Once in (live action) New York, though, Giselle is no longer the beautiful princess whose every movement is something to ooh and ahh over. No, she’s the crazy lady in the big prom dress who thinks she can talk to animals. Giselle soon encounters McDreamy … I mean Robert (Patrick Dempsey), whose initial brusque attempts to help out Giselle turn into something more meaningful, and if you don’t know how this story ends, then you’ve never seen a Disney movie.

What makes Enchanted work for the majority of its running time is its commitment to having Giselle act just like a cartoon princess would, but in the real world. Therefore, she calls on a multitude of creatures (through song, of course) to help clean Robert’s apartment … but instead of cute forest animals, she gets a menagerie of pigeons, rats, and, yes, cockroaches (not that that fazes her). She breaks out into song whenever she feels like it, the best of which (“That’s How You Know”) comes as she and Robert are walking through Central Park and they suddenly find themselves recreating scenes straight out of The Little Mermaid. Giselle goes through a real world awakening as the film goes along, and although it’s an idea that needs to happen for the ending to come to fruition, it serves to blunt some of her ever-present cheeriness, taking a bit of the fun of the film out with it.

Alan Menken, the songwriting/composing genius behind The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin composed, along with Stephen Schwartz, all of the music for Enchanted, and they’re all up to his usual standards, especially considering the incongruity of the song with the scene it goes with and/or the tongue-in-cheek nature of the majority of the film. Adams is literally pitch perfect as Giselle, even when the story forces her to abandon her normal princess demeanor. Dempsey is good, although an apparently ill-fitting wig is a distraction throughout (not that that has anything to do with his performance, but come on – this is big-budget Hollywood here. Find a good wig!). Marsden and Sarandon make generally good impressions, but they make limited appearances in comparison with Adams and Dempsey. And they’re all upstaged by a CGI chipmunk who makes the trip with Giselle – you can never go wrong with cute animals, especially one who can talk in an animated world but is forced to use pantomime in the live action world.

In the end, Enchanted is a fun piece of fluff that holds no story surprises, but more than a few storytelling ones. And in a world where 99% of movie plots are unoriginal, that’s pretty much the best you could ask for.