Enchanted
When almost everyone I know adores a movie, I go into it with a little bit of resistance, not because I have a contrarian streak (although I do) but because I figure it’s bound to disappoint. Enchanted didn’t. It’s not a perfect movie — the ending sequence with the dragon is superfluous, as if the producers looked around and realized they hadn’t done enough with the effects budget, and/or Susan Sarandon — but it’s very charming.
Much of the charm proceeds directly from Amy Adams, who is just adorable. She’s very pretty, and perfectly credible as a princess, but she’s also real-person pretty — versus Hollywood pretty, which is a different animal and which can make certain situations hard to swallow. You know how sometimes a romantic comedy asks you to believe that one of the protagonists has not had sex for like two years or something, and you have no choice but to accept that premise, really, but when you think about, it’s like, a woman who looks like that hasn’t gotten a single offer? Not that she hasn’t found romantic happiness; the gorgeous have the same neuroses as the rest of us…but that nobody’s taken a shot at it? That isn’t the set-up here; it’s about relatability, and Adams is a beauty for sure, but one you might actually know in your life.
Another key aspect of Enchanted‘s appeal is its momentum — it doesn’t get bogged down in explaining how or why the citizens of New York have apparently decided to accept wholesale that fairy-tale creatures have come through a magic wormhole to resolve their plotting among us. It just assumes it as the case, and moves on. The plot does get slowed down at various points, mostly because it keeps doubling back to Narissa, and once the principals have arrived in the Big Apple, their attempts to navigate “reality,” find each other, negotiate their feelings, and so on give the movie as much intrigue as it requires — but she’s the plot catalyst, so the script probably couldn’t have avoided that, and makes up for the occasional slow spot with economies elsewhere (i.e. the climactic scene at the ball, during which exposition for the benefit of other guests isn’t bothered with).
But despite some pacing problems, it works. It’s not cutesy; it’s cast expertly; it doesn’t second-guess itself or take itself too seriously, and everyone gets a happy ending.
Tags: movies
Amy Adams is pretty much EXACTLY what a Disney princess come to life would be. I’ve been a fan of hers since she was doing bit roles on Charmed and Buffy, and I couldn’t be happier about her success. She’s adorable, charming – and damn, she can sing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she made the movie – the script was good – but it wouldn’t have been nearly so good with anyone else in that role.
The movie really was, well, enchanting. I rarely laugh out loud at movies (whether that’s a sad statement about movies today or my own curmudgeonliness, I’m not sure) and Enchanted had me doubled over guffawing and squee-ing. I had such a great time watching it.
I didn’t even hate Patrick Dempsey in it. And that’s saying a lot.
I agree with you on all points. I appreciated that the movie didn’t bother bogging us down with justifying and explaining the quirks that have to be overlooked to make it work (how does Giselle know how to clean toilets? how does Prince Edward have cash to rent a motel room and buy food?) and let the magic sort of happen. I think it kept the balance between Disney conventions and modern self-awareness really well.
I also relate to when so many people have expressed their love for a movie that I avoid it for a while, because the expectations are too high. The problem, though, becomes that then I never get around to seeing these beloved movies.
I was disappointed Idina didn’t sing though…and James Marsden was much better than I expected.
Hmmm. I keep pushing this one down the Netflix queue in favor of quirky British sitcoms, but it might be time to let this one come for a visit. Usually anything with the words “Disney” and “princess” together are sick-making, but I suppose I’m going to have to get over that, what with having a 2-year-old daughter in the house. Yikes. I can’t show “Taxi Driver” to a toddler? No?
See, I thought I was going to love this. I even bought it sight unseen. And then I hated it. As did my mom. I’m giving it to a friend who liked it. I’m so sad I don’t want to keep it, because it would have made a nice addition to my other Disney princess movies.
Like Molly, I didn’t even hate Patrick Dempsey in it. And that’s saying a lot for me, too. I think one of the reasons Enchanted works as well as it does is that the principals throw themselves into the proceedings with such gusto. Adams, Marsden, Sarandon and Spall are all having a whale of a time with their cartoons-made-flesh. Adams is the perfect choice for Giselle – she really is adorable. I keep wondering why Marsden isn’t a bigger star: he’s charming, clearly doesn’t take himself too seriously – and he can sing, too.
The dragon sequence at the end might just be an excuse for a special-effects blow-out, but it’s a recognizable take on the sequence in Sleeping Beauty where Maleficent transforms herself from wicked fairy (with a sneaky resemblance to Hepburn) to scaly dragon. Since Sarandon’s Wicked Queen owes something to her counterparts in both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty I for one would have missed it.
You know, I went in to “Enchanted” with relatively high hopes, since the NY Times review was positive and a couple of my friends had seen it and loved it — but I was so squicked out by the weird gender/ethnic things going on that I had a hard time enjoying it. What’s the opposite of a Disney Princess? Why, a hyper-Jewish New York career woman, of course!
I’m okay with Patrick Dempsey’s character choosing the princess in the end — I’ve come to expect no less from mainstream cinema, and I guess I appreciate that they DIDN’T make Idina Menzel into some kind of demon in order to justify it — but I am *not* okay with the ending they then shoe-horned in for Idina’s character. (Spoiler alert) For NO REASON AT ALL she suddenly falls in love with a blithering idiot, leaves her entire life behind to become a cartoon character, and THROWS AWAY her cell phone, the one remaining link to her identity as a businesswoman. Because, you know, who needs a career when you’re a princess!
Sigh. I guess it IS Disney, after all. At least Amy Adams rocks.
I started watching this movie really expecting to dislike it for its anti-feminist ideals but it charmed the pants off me. I couldn’t believe I actually laughed out loud and enjoyed it as much as I did.
I thought it was very cute but I could have done without the required comic sidekick of the chipmunk – he really did not add very much in this one. The dragon scene also could have edited out and then it would have been fantastic – a song that can rhyme vermin! Brilliant! It did seem odd that Giselle was able to grow as a character and determine real feelings but the prince guy never did… eh it’s Disney.
I’m just happy that I’ve finally learned that Amy Adams and Isla Fisher are in fact, two different people.
While I can see where Elise and others coming from , I have to disagree; I though Enchanted was a great movie with a pro-feminist message, in that girls can choose whatever they want to be, not what’s expected of them.
*spoliers if you haven’t seen it* Giselle was always under the impression that you meet your prince, become a princess and that’s that. When she saw their were other alternatives, she figured out that she needed something more fulfilling and she didn’t have to settle for just being some unquestioning “princess-wife”. Though Idina’s character didn’t get much development (since it was a supporting role), it seemed that more important to her than her career was the passion and impulsive adventure that being with Edward offered her, and I didn’t see anything wrong with that. (Plus, I LOVED seeing Animated Idina, having been her fan for almost a decade) I always saw the feiminist movement as making choices available to women, whether you wantd to pursue a high-powered career or make your family your top priority. And after being beaten over the head with “married and happily-ever-after” princesses, it was about time Disney gave us a herione that found her happiness in another way.
Rant aside, I adored Amy Adams in this role, and I loved how Disney mocked so many of their own well-worn cliches. (My favorite part of the movie is “That’s How You Know” when Patrick Dempsey walks around wondering why everyone seems to know the song- a great comic jab at ANY musical!) Even my husband, who’s a hard sell, had a great time watching this movie, but he was won over by James Marsden’s earnest goofiness. Why he and Adams aren’t bigger stars, I’ll never know.
I saw this for the first time on an airplane, and watched just as raptly on the return trip, bobbing my head to the music, occasionally clapping my little hands together in delight, and beaming like an idiot. I am now wont to sing Happy Little Working Song to the cats when I’m doing my chores :)
I really enjoyed this movie. It was fun and hit TONS of my childhood nostalgia notes. I didn’t see this till my little sister got the DVD and made my mom watch it over spring break. I didn’t join them as I thought I had better things to do, but ended up watching later on a Sunday morning. Then I watched all the extras and then watched it again in the afternoon.
As a kid I knew all the words to the songs in Disney’s Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty etc. It was fun trying to find all the bits that were copied from other movies. There’s Thumper, and the prince/king dance, and curtain clothes and an Italian restaurant called Bella Notte among many others.
Actually, now that you’ve reminded me Sars, I still have most of the Disney princess movies (on VHS! They’re 20 years old!) and I may have to watch them this weekend. While wearing pink.
I went in with low expectations and felt the same way Elise did. Maybe it was because I like Idina so much but I felt really bad for her character. I love a good Disney princess movie but this one just wasn’t for me.
I loved this movie! It was so cute, it made my head explode into candy!!
I wasn’t crazy about the whole dragon story-line, either, but I think Sandman is absolutely correct in identifying its origins. It kinda had to be there.
I’m not a huge fan of either Disney or princess movies, but I confess this one won my heart. Amy Adams was even more adorable than in “Junebug” (which is really saying something), and everyone else was just delightful. Man, I love me some Timothy Spall.
I also agree with Lynne about the ending for the ex-fiancee.
If you watch the DVD, you should REALLY check out the extra where they show you how they raided the entire Disney animation library for bit after bit after bit. Mary mentioned a few of them, but there are TONS.
It was a tiny little touch, but my favorite part of the movie was that she cut out actual sewing pattern panels when she was making her curtain dress. Most cartoony characters would be shown cutting out the exact outline of the dress. I don’t know why that tickled me so much – I don’t even sew!
I loved it – mostly because *finally* there was a movie that was cute *AND* interesting, so I could take my 80-year-old mother to it and she wouldn’t get offended by the: swearing, sex, drugs, or overly-saccharine-y cuteness.
Hee.
But I did like the movie as a movie, too. It was fun. I went in hoping for something at least watchable, and was instead charmed and amused. (I could have done without the whole dragon thing, too)
I guess I had very different expectations. I expected to really enjoy “Enchanted,” and then I ended up getting wildly turned off by the (what I perceived as) anti-feminist message.
I think though that it mostly just bothers me the way the whole “Disney Princess” thing has turned into such a cult for little girls. That the whole idea is that you find your man and you live happily ever after and then you can open a clothing store with lots of cute! frilly! dresses!!
Because you know, what else do women do other than shop, and then get married?
***Lynne says
(My favorite part of the movie is “That’s How You Know” when Patrick Dempsey walks around wondering why everyone seems to know the song- a great comic jab at ANY musical!) ***
That was one of my favorite parts of the film. Giselle starts singing and he begs to stop because he is embarrassed. And then all these people just start singing and dancing along with her. Perfect choreography and he is flabbergasted as the number gets bigger and bigger without any rehearsal. What makes that scene so great is how resistant he is to all the joyfulness until he finally stops resisting and accepts it into his life. Pretty much explained his interaction with Giselle and realizing that he love her.
So cute. One of my favorites from Disney.
Personally, I loved the nods to the other Disney movies. I nearly lost it when Giselle and Robert Dempsey’s character reenacted the ballroom scene from “Beauty and the Beast.”
Also, this probably speaks volumes about me, personally, but I connected with Idina’s character. I live every day in the real world wishing that my boyfriend would do one romantic thing. Then she’s swept up by a Prince Charming from out of the blue. I’d leap at the chance. I guess it’s only fitting (for me anyway) that her name was Nancy. (heh) Maybe my friends are right; I am a total princess.
Did anyone else catch what book Giselle was reading when she was sitting on the couch in her (borrowed) PJs? It was the decidedly woman-empowering book Robert (was that his name?) gave his daughter in the taxicab. She was in fact so engrossed in it that she barely spoke to him when he came into the room.
I thought that was a nice detail and a way of showing Disney recognizes its princesses need to grow up. And hey, at least Giselle becomes gainfully employed. When’s the last time a DP did that?
Loved this one. I agree with Lynne..I loved when everyone sang together and Dempsey was all confused. I am huge fan of musicals, so it was especially funny. I thought the movie was Disney making fun of itself in a way, and I appreciated that. On a side note, I once took my daughter to Disney on Ice. At the climax of the show, there were four princesses (one in each corner) in some sort of peril (asleep, perceived dead) and the princes skated over and saved them. It was pretty disgusting. In the end, Giselle uses her talents to open her own store/clothing line, so good for her. And she got Patrick Dempsey. I wouldn’t mind getting him.
It’s also sort of an amazing musical, with Alan Menken (who wrote the music for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, etc.) doing a lovely job of parodying himself. I also enjoyed how “Part of Your World” was playing in the background as elevator music at some point, and the actors who voiced Belle, Ariel and Mulan all had cameos. (Ah, Broadway nerd trivia!)
I actually loved how Nancy ended up. The way she reacted to the Giselle-arranged romantic gestures (and to Edward introducing Giselle as “the love of his life” or whatever it was), throughout the movie, told me she was someone who very much wanted big, dramatic romance in her life. She seemed like she’d resigned herself to a “grown-up relationship” that didn’t seem to be based on much beyond affection and feeling like they should get married after dating for so long.
So with Edward, Nancy gets the romance she’s been missing, and with Robert, Giselle finds that you can have a grown-up relationship that isn’t bloodless.
I agree with Nona that Nancy seemed to yearn at least a bit for the grand romantic gestures. Leaving aside the whole issue of Giselle’s decision not to marry a man she’s known for five minutes in favour of one she’s known for five days – or maybe they date after Giselle sets up shop? – I didn’t see Nancy’s giving up her cell phone as abandoning her last link to her identity as a businesswoman, but giving up a relationship mediated, as they say, by technology in favour of a more direct connection. Hmm. Of course, she’s only known Edward for five minutes, so it’s still sort of a problem. I feel certain that Nancy would make Edward reconsider his reflex of calling everyone else “Peasants!”
As has been mentioned above, a problem of another sort is why hire Idina Menzel and not have her sing at all? I kept waiting for Nancy’s big number.
Like RK, I saw this on a flight. It was the perfect airplane film for me – I always want to watch films that are light and entertaining and require no thought (my brain turns to mush when I travel long-haul).
I wouldn’t have gone to the cinema to see this (I don’t have kids and I’m didn’t even like Disney films as a kid), but I really enjoyed it. The Happy Working Song was just brilliant. It was a great film, and if I am fortunate enough to have children at some point this film will have gone a long way towards me taking them to a Disney film or two!
I agree! I just got over a divorce- one year seperated and 1 month divorced and I love this movie… Helped me smile through a really really really hard time in my life. And I’m 28 with no kids, but its just so silly…cant help but smile!
Also agreed with Nona on the Nancy issue. Plus, it’s really sort of an interesting commentary, that while the cartoon world was a fairytale, our own world has its own weird social norms, just instead of falling in love in two seconds, we don’t tell people how we feel. I could see her falling for Edward when she commented about how he declared his feelings without a touch of irony.
As sort of a parallel to this, the movie gives us the little girl, whose father is trying to get her away from the Disney Princess culture, but who still loves the fairytale princess idea. I think that it makes a nice point, that these little girls aren’t dreaming about a man taking care of them for the rest of their lives (notice that you never see a scene where the princess lives happily ever after because she’s living in the lap of luxury), they’re enjoying the pretty dresses and the emotions and the happiness of two people finding each other. Why take that away so young?
Overall, I was surprised to love the movie, too. I always loved Disney movies, and this had exactly what it needed.
I saw the previews for this on Dish pay-per-view, and I was undecided about seeing it.
I think I will, now.
I loved all the homages to other Disney animated features, too. The difference, imo, with the dragon is that each reference lasted a few seconds or a few minutes if you count production numbers, while the entire ending was just ripped off from *Sleeping Beauty* (my favorite cartoon). Homage = clever. Ripping off = imagination on vacation.
And btw Sandman, any resemblance between Hepburn and Maleficent is coincidental. She’s based on the actress who voiced her, the great Eleanor Audley. Compare Maleficent with Cinderella’s stepmother to see the similarity. By this time, the animators were either rotoscoping or studying footage of the actors’ recording their lines to do their characters.
visual aid: http://tinyurl.com/49npbw
I’ll start off by saying I absolutely loved this movie, for many reasons. One of the things I love about this movie is that the ending was not about the prince rescuing the princess, but that Giselle grabbed the sword and went after the dragon!
My mom was worried about the “Disney influence” when I was young, so one year for Christmas she bought me a book called “Don’t Bet on the Prince”, which was basically a book of feminist fairy tales and essays. If you like fairy tales, and I do, (in fact I have books and books of collections from all over the world) I would recommend this book. I think the editor was Jack Zipes.
I loved that Disney finally got around to (semi-) acknowledging that they always picked the wimpiest version of whatever fairy tale they bringing to the big screen. There are so many versions of these stories, why did they always have to pick the one where the princess did nothing but wait to be rescued?