Disney's Enchanted casts splendid spell
Images Courtesy of Barry Wetcher/Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Patrick Dempsey as Robert, Amy Adams as Princess Giselle, Susan Sarandon as Queen Narissa and James Marsden as Prince Edward star in this movie about a cartoon princess, engaged to a handsome prince, who is banished to New York City by a villainous queen.
In Disney's latest film Enchanted, a princess-to-be from an animated, old-school-Disney fairytale world ends up in the live-action world of New York City.
The future princess is Giselle of Andalasia, first voiced and then played by Amy Adams. Giselle is most reminiscent of Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid, but with lighter hair and eyes.
Like many of her predecessors, Giselle is kind and sweet and very naïve, and can sing and communicate with her many animal friends.
Enchanted starts off like many of the other classic Disney animated princess movies: a beautiful girl with a lovely singing voice meets and falls for a prince, and he for her. On Giselle's way to marry her beloved Prince Edward, however, an old hag shoves her down a well; it turns out that the hag is really a disguise of-surprise, surprise-the evil Queen Narissa, who doesn't want her stepson Edward to get married and take away her throne.
The next thing she knows, Giselle is emerging from a manhole in the middle of New York City's Times Square. She must then brave the very strange real world (well, if New York City can really be considered part of the real world) with only her ideal fairytale world outlook-which, as you might guess, doesn't work out so well for her.
Fortunately for Giselle, she runs into a lawyer, Robert (played by Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey), with a young daughter still in the throes of her princess-lusting years. The daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey), convinces her father to help out Giselle, whom she is convinced is a real princess. In true princess fashion, Giselle must then wait for her prince to come and rescue her.
Prince Edward does indeed come after his beloved, along with an annoying computer-animated chipmunk. Back in the animated world of Andalasia, Queen Narissa sends her servant Nathaniel after him both to keep an eye on Edward and knock off Giselle.
Although Enchanted's plot leaves very few surprises (yes, there actually are a few), the movie is quite charming and is as much fun for adults as for children.
It's nice to see that Disney can poke fun at itself-the fairytale world of Andalasia is about as cliché as it can get-the way other people have been doing for a long time.
Most of the actors in Enchanted do a fine job, led by the brilliant performance of Amy Adams.
And what would any animated Disney movie (well, partially animated movie) be without singing and dancing?
Adams, who does her own singing, has a beautiful voice and brings the whole screen to life with her three songs, each of which are wonderful in very different ways.
It's not just the songs, but the scenes in which they appear: they're easily the best scenes in the movie. I don't want to give too much away, but the parts of the movie with the songs would alone be worth the price of your admission.
There are some minimal problems to the movie: some plot gaps, some weak plot points and character issues, some missing explanatory scenes and a lack of really good special effects.
Still, Enchanted makes a fine addition to Disney's princess collection.
