Fantasy collides with reality in Disney’s latest feature that will delight both kids and grownups.
By Bob Brown
WHAT a romp! Here’s a Disney feature that will delight kids, but it’s really for grownups who remember what the company used to do best. Disney has gone back to its core strengths — strong storytelling, hand-drawn animation, sunny humor, retold fairytales, and music — and then winked at them.
Who better to pull its own leg than the company that gave us such romantic treacle as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Pocahontas, just to name a few? The trick is to tap into the feel-goodness even as you’re mercilessly, and hilariously, sending it up. Yet there’s just enough for adults to chew on, even while the kids are having a good time, missing a lot that goes over their heads.
As directed by onetime animator Kevin Lima (The Little Mermaid) from a screenplay by Bill Kelly (Blast from the Past), Enchanted drags in all the old Disney clichés: In a cartoon fairytale, a would-be princess, Giselle (voiced by Amy Adams), dreams of her prince-charming-to-be, while all the woodland creatures — talking, singing bunnies, bluebirds, chipmunks, deer, etc. — chime in to her song-and-prance routine.
Somewhere out there, he’s on his way, though they’ve never met. And here he comes through the forest, Prince Edward (voiced by James Marsden), riding his 10th ogre of the day to the ground. On hearing Giselle’s song, the prince is off to win her. But his aide Nathaniel (voiced by Timothy Spall) wants to keep a lid on it. Because if Edward marries Giselle, then Queen Narissa (voiced by Susan Sarandon), Edward’s mother, will be furious and out of a job.
As the happy couple rides off into what appears to be happily ever-aftering, the shape-shifting Queen Narissa intervenes before the two can take their vows. She banishes Giselle to a faraway place not unlike hell: midtown Manhattan. The girl pops up through a manhole in Times Square — converted from cartoon to flesh and blood, but with all the naiveté and cockeyed optimism of her formerly two-dimensional self.
This strange world is a place where love at first sight often ends in divorce, and attorneys fight over their clients’ property. Giselle is just fighting to get back to her prince. She can’t understand the life of a guy like Robert (Patrick Dempsey). He’s a New York divorce attorney who has literally caught her on the street one night when she falls from a billboard display of a castle, advertising a casino.
Robert is about to tie the knot with his five-year girlfriend Nancy (Idina Menzel), much to the dismay of his fantasy-loving daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey), who hasn’t heard good things about stepmothers. Then bam, out of the blue this real princess falls into their laps. Morgan is delighted. But poor dad is hardly convinced that Giselle is anything other than a confused, perhaps mentally unbalanced, young lady from out of town. She just needs a phone and a ticket to somewhere. Although she is strangely affecting, with her Pollyanna goodness and open heart. What to do when her past pops up to find her?
If you’ve seen decades of Disney films, you’ll recognize the many veiled self-references to characters, stories and even sets, which are all lovingly parodied. There’s enough singing and dancing in this near-musical to satisfy without cloying. And yes, even these musical numbers are over-the-top spoofs of the genre. Parody or not, the songwriting team of Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame) make it all very listenable, even hummable. The show-stopping centerpiece is an all-dancing, all-singing romp through Central Park. Even the utility workers do cartwheels. The live cinematography by Don Burgess (Forrest Gump) has a sheen and glamour that match the wonderland of the animated world.
Performances, while necessarily cartoonish, are pitch perfect. It was a piece of casting genius to put the cool, debonair Dempsey (the so-called “Dr. McDreamy” from Grey’s Anatomy) opposite the wide-eyed wonder that is Adams. She is utterly the princess, who makes negativity seem like a crime against nature. Everything turns to sunshine at her touch.
When fantasy collides with reality, something has to give on both sides. Whether you live in a dream world, or reality, there are good and bad points to both. The strong, moral-based story line is simple and clear. But it’s also challenging those of us who live in an irony-bound age. What’s so great about being smartly cynical anyway? You know life is a bummer; so where does that kind of thinking get you in the end? Think positive. Listen to your heart. Maybe that person sitting across the breakfast table is really a prince or princess in disguise.
Rated PG for some scary images and mild innuendo.