Enchanted
Review by Loc
What’s more classic than the Disney animated fairytales: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty? They’ve become synonymous with childhood romance, Prince Charming and the damsel in distress, all things good and wholesome. In fact, they’ve become such cultural mainstays that Hollywood has already reinvented the genre. One school has introduced faireality, injecting realism into these yarns of youth. Ever After retold the story of Cinderella with more realistic characters and motivations. Or how about the comedy school of deconstruction, where something like Shrek pokes fun at the over-the-top insanity found in so many of our classic fairytales. Well, what if you did both? What if you took a fairytale, pitted it against modern sensibilities, but with a tongue-in-cheek/wink-wink attitude? What you might get is Enchanted. Quick hit: they needed to throw in more enchantments to make this flick move.
While the idea doesn’t seem unique, the presentation hasn’t been attempted in some time. Enchanted begins as an animated adventure, complete with sing-along songs, anthropomorphic forest critters dancing in choreographed perfection, and a belle of a belle, anxiously awaiting her Prince Charming. Soon enough, lovebirds meet, off to happily-ever-after they attempt to go, until the evil step-mother/wicked witch throws the proverbial wrench into the proceedings. Down the enchanted well our damsel goes, and off to the plot twist she enters. Ending up in Times Square, our damsel must make her way through our hard, cold reality. Luckily, there’s a real-world prince to help her on her way.
The next hour and fifteen minutes plays on as a cheeky fish-out-of-water flick. You get the naïve Giselle singing and dancing in our world. Her infectious charm and optimism reflect how cold and cynical our world has become. You also get the normal Robert trying to help her along, but struggling to keep his long-time girlfriend from thinking he’s having an affair with a ditzy chick. Throw in the precocious daughter, the bumbling animated prince, and the conniving witch, and you got yourself a big ball of clichés! Yippee.
However, the flick has been sold as a big ball of clichés that we can all laugh at. The bumbling prince, well of course he’s self-involved while being a do-gooder. That’s the funny part, right? And the naïve damsel, she’s so innocent that her longings for happily ever after are even funnier, right? And the wicked witch, her efforts at destroying the perfect relationship, but doing it with our real-world sensibilities, that’s clever AND funny, right?
Nope, everything is amusing at best. Amy Adams as the damsel Giselle, pretty solid. She does a good job of being annoyingly happy, but I don’t know that the annoying part was intentional. Patrick Dempsey is the well-meaning Robert, who plays the McDreamy, successful guy very well. Almost like he perfected that role in a TV show and simply transported it to the big screen. Granted, these characters don’t require much life to them, and that’s wat you get.
On a side note, James Marsden plays the doting Prince Edward, and his perfect jawline smile is great for the perfect prince. However, I fear that James is now settling in to his role as the guy-who-gets-shafted in every one of his movies: Superman Returns, X-Men, and the biggest of all, The Notebook. If you are ever fighting over a girl, just pray that James Marsden is your competition. You’ll end up with the girl and know that the other guy is a decent guy who’s OK with that.
Overall, Enchanted tried to inject modern sensibilities into the animated fairytale. However, there are too many instances that require the audience to nod along in suspended disbelief. How can Patrick Demsey disappear from work for a half of a day, and then watch Amy Adams put on a 10 minute musical number in Times Square? The flick answers this with a resounding, Who cares, this is funny stuff! And that’s really the takeaway from all of this. Enchanted embraces its “clever” title, whether it really is clever or not. It is somewhat enjoyable and you should know what you’re gonna get before you even buy your ticket. But make no mistake about it, Enchanted is far from its title. Out of twelve clock strikes before midnight, Enchanted turns into a pumpkin with 6 strikes. Nothing great about this one.
