Enchanted (2008)
I approached Disney’s Enchanted, a mix of live action and animation, with low expectations. Few reviews were glowing, until the DVD review in Entertainment Weekly convinced me to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised.
Amy Adams voices, then plays, Giselle, a beautiful girl who speaks to animals. She is not a princess, though she is set to become one after she meets the prince, voiced and played with tongue in cheek by the handsome James Marsden. His stepmother, the evil queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), is determined not to give up the crown, so she sends Giselle down a well to NYC, where the action becomes live. There she meets Patrick Dempsey, a divorce lawyer, and wacky hijinks ensue.
For Disney, it might even be considered transgressive. The film pokes, albeit gently, at the Disney princess paradigm. Giselle isn’t a princess, and the prince is rather dim, in contrast to his smile. The cartoon characters have simple views of life: they fall in love in a day, live in countries just beyond the forest, and burst into song on a regular basis. There is a very funny scene when Giselle calls up animals in NYC to help her clean Dempsey’s apartment. Instead of the cutesy wood animals of the animated section (or the Snow White scene to which it pays homage), she summons cockroaches, pigeons (one of the them one legged) and rats. She sings a “Happy Working Song” while they clean, including a shot of toothbrushes used to clean the toilet. (That three songs from the film were nominated for Oscars, including this one, was silly. There must have been better songs in other movies that got passed over for this trifle.) There’s further winking in the casting. Dempsey’s girlfriend is played by Idina Menzel, who voiced the princess in Hercules. The women who voiced Ariel in the Little Mermaid is his secretary, and the woman who voiced Belle in Beauty and the Beast also has a cameo.
This could easily have been trifling and saccharine. Yet Dempsey’s charm, Marsden’s ironic prince, Sarandon’s campy queen, and Adams’ charming heroine, combine to make this quite good. My 4yo son Drake watched half of it with us. The July 4 fireworks woke and upset him. Any innuendo went over his head, and while the queen frightened him, he really liked Pip the chipmunk, so it was a good parentally guided viewing.
July 7th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Three song nominations for Enchanted–and none for Eddie Vedder’s haunting work for Into the Wild. Completely criminal.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Good. I’ve been wanting to watch this, but have been on the fence about it.
In other news, when will my neighbors run out of fireworks? We’re on day five here, people. For the love of the toddlers (and their parents), please stop . . .
July 8th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Amen to the Into the Wild soundtrack.