Encantada

In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday, I will post a family film review. Who better to deliver in that genre than Disney with their new animated/live action hybrid Enchanted. This movie is very cute and quite good at being both wholesome for the kiddies and tongue-in-cheek for the adults. You need to appreciate a studio being able to poke fun at itself. By using the classic stories of Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty, all made famous in their own right by the Mouse House, we are given some big laughs. The acting is very self-referential and broad as far as the fairy tale roles that make the journey into our world's New York City go. Screenwriter Bill Kelly gives the cast some great lines and set pieces to play in, ultimately showing us that the storybooks aren't always right. True love does exist, but not necessarily with the one you first think. The message is good, the songs are good, the animation and acting are good—Disney came through with this one. Along with Meet the Robinsons, Mickey and friends may be turning the ship around into a new renaissance.

We are ushered into the story with some 2D animation of Giselle, a pretty girl looking for her Prince Charming. That man is in fact Prince Edward, recently being led by his stepmother's henchman to battle ogres and partake in adventure to keep his mind off a wife. You see if he marries, Queen Narissa loses her crown and he becomes King. She is having none of that and will cross into evil stepmother/queen/hag territory to trick Giselle into falling through a portal to our world. Now a fish-out-of-water, she must find her way back to her love, that eventually comes looking for her along with her best friend Pip the squirrel and the evil witch's lackey Nathaniel. It is on this path that she runs into divorce lawyer Robert Philip and turns both his and her life upside down.

I love how the fantasy world comes into ours so awkwardly. Giselle's ability to call on all the animals of her meadows allows her to do the same in NY, only the creatures she gets are rats, pigeons, cockroaches, and flies—yet they all do the work anyway—it's priceless. Also, when she breaks into song, all the people on the streets join along and have a blast being part of the huge choreographed numbers. Her innocence is very precious and trying new things always gets her new lawyer friend in trouble, yet helps those in her wake. Patrick Dempsey plays that friend to great effect. He sees what she is doing and can't help but fall for her joyful, inability to see cruelty in the world. Playing the straight man to her craziness leads to wonderful moments of laughter as well as those full of poignancy and compassion, giving the kids in the audience something to think about and lessons to learn.

While Dempsey's evolution as a man is something to appreciate, it is the transplants that shine. Amy Adams and James Marsden play Giselle and Prince Edward respectively. They bring the happy-go-lucky mentality of Andalasia to our disenchanted realm. The over-acting is great and the culture shock fantastic. Adams is gorgeous and has the chops to make the aloofness work, but also change later on into a human being that sees what reality brings. When she tells Edward that she was thinking instead of singing, his reaction really hits home on the vast void between storybook fantasy and the real world. As for Marsden, his childish actions are truly funny; a borderline simpleton, he believes in chivalry and when he is told a suspected villain is really a friend, he just flips a switch and is OK with it. His smile is infectious and his vacant expressions indispensable to the film working on the dual levels it does.

Everything works here to bring a wonderful family-friendly story to life. Complete with its pop-up book bookends, Enchanted is truly magical. I don't know how it could ever have worked as a complete animated work, as I have read it originated as, so thankfully they took the plunge to expand it with live action. Crossing between the two worlds is seamless—2D characters turned into humans or 3D computer generated animals. With many instances ripe for a wrong turn, the filmmakers seem to come to all the right decisions. Working in older Disney yarns and playing each story thread to its effective conclusion leaves us with a tale that could become a classic amongst the ones it appropriates. So, if you are looking for a way to spend a couple hours with the whole family, Enchanted is definitely a great way to go.

My friends and I are big Disney fanatics, so we went to see Enchanted with open minds.

The movie's playful satire of the age of classic Disney animation is the best part. Even the title is written in the Gothic style shown in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The animation and score (composed by Alan Menken...see The Lion King and numerous other 90s Disney movies) are simply the icing on the cake at the beginning. In the animation world the kids will be entertained and the teenagers and adults will chortle as they remember the overly-enthusiastic naiveness of the protagonists of early Disney films.

Giselle (played superbly by Amy Adams...this woman walks, sits down, does EVERYTHING in character. The innocent vitality she has for life at the beginning of the movie never wavers even when she experiences reality) is super excited to get married to her cliché Prince Charming (James Marsden, also wonderful. His range is incredible...I still can't believe he is also Cyclops and Corny Collins). Conveniently, Charming rides up on his white horse and saves her from a troll, and upon meeting her for the first time decides to get married the next day. But alas, the evil queen(Susan Saradon, who has a regrettably short part so I can't comment on her performance) knows that once Charming, her stepson, marries Giselle she will have to give up her throne to her stepdaughter. So she decides to trick her into a play "where there are no happily ever afters" by way of a magic well.

Patrick Dempsey plays a lawyer who grows skeptical of the subtle fantasy of living thanks to his own corroding marriage, but thankfully he meets Giselle who reminds him (through turning a daily stroll through Central Park into a musical Howard Ashman would be proud of) of the Disney magic in everyone! The movie is rather cute, but the singing and the happiness and the flowers get annoying (although still bearable) after about an hour. The score is better than the forgettable script...the jokes come from the performances, not the writing. I was mostly disappointed in the holes in the plot. Events that shouldn't have happened in reality were never explained (how did the queen's henchman keep disguising himself? How was Giselle able to swing herself up on a building after the queen?)...I know the movie's supposed to be a fantasy but the screenwriters should not completely alter the rules of reality when the point is to show the differences between the real and animated world.

The script is the biggest flaw. Frankly I think the cinematography could have been better too, especially in Giselle's scenes (more sweeping tracking shots of the scenery would have maintained the realism of the fantasy). But whatever. It wasn't a waste of a movie. Take the kids, and Disney fanatics will appreciate the attempt to recreate the classic animation age...but will notice some elements missing that makes this movie feel like it has less heart than it advertises.

There is little more I could add to the stellar comments and reviews for this film. While it is not perfect (probably some expository songs were cut out to reduce time, particularly in the case of secondary characters), it left me smiling and happy, and I even bought the soundtrack on iTunes. One thing I didn't notice mentioned (probably it was noted elsewhere) was that in the beginning Giselle and Edward defeated an evil troll. Isn't this a reference to the upstart Shrek? I love how, instead of making fun of Disney lore this film gently nudges it and updates it. I hope the very tired Disney fairy tale mocking genre is slain by this film.

I have never written any movie review because I was never in awe of any movie to that extent. Till date, I have given 10/10 rating to 'F.R.I.E.N.D.S' and LOTR trilogy. My rating criteria:

Decent movie - 6 Entertaining movie - 7 Leaves you moist eyed once - 8 Leaves you moist eyed multiple times - 9 You keep talking about the movie for a few days after watching it - 10

My rating for Enchanted is perfect 10/10. It has got comedy, romance, drama, fantasy, 'aww' factor, great script, awesome performances, copying the trademark scenes from the animated movie with creative excellence... EVERYTHING :) :)

I'm a teenage boy, and the reviews for "Enchanted," along with some friendly persuasion from my sisters, moved me to give this live action/animated combo. a chance. In the first fourteen minutes of Enchanted, there were two things that caught my attention: 1)The never-ending, sugar-coated, sing-along tune and 2) The grainy style of animation that Disney lavished upon the screen(a tribute to the Disney classics, such as Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty); in this time span, I felt truly embarrassed to be sitting in the theater with the older couples clustered around me. I mean, what kind of boy in his right mind would want to watch a movie with musical numbers and pretty princesses? And yet, there was something about it...the aire of it almost took me back to the days of my childhood when I would smash my face up to the T.V. screen, when Belle and the Beast were having their unforgettable ball dance or when Ariel was brushing her hair with a fork. It was these sorts of memories that surfaced to my mind as I kept watching Enchanted. And it kept getting better and better. When there was a sudden switch to live-action, my heart was captured by Amy Adams, who seems to be, in my opinion, the finest choice for Giselle. Prince Edward and Robert also had their perfect fits (James Marsden and Patrick Dempsey). Even though this movie is close to perfect, it still has its problems. There is an aire of predictability in the storyline, as well as the fact that it's swamped with clichés (some of which are fresh, and some of which are flat). Yet it flows on, innocently, with its strong actors/actresses, decent-enough screenplay that gives you a warm feeling in your heart (which is what Disney is supposed to do, right?), spectacular music numbers that have charm, and the fact that it is suitable for all ages. There is a little something for everyone in this film--and it's not just a film either--it is a time-machine back to the golden era of Disney's animated films, and its live-action ones as well. And it helps me look forward to the new Disney: one that keeps surprising me more and more every single day.