My favorite working actress these days is Amy Adams. That comes in large part to seeing her in three very different movies in 2016 and seeing her play three very different characters well. True, her Lois Lane in Batman vs Superman may not have been the strongest character, but she was as good as the material she’d been given. However, she was fantastic in Arrival and Nocturnal Animals, and I don’t think there could have been two more different characters for her to play if she tried. However, I know she first hit it big in various sweet, ingenue roles, but I can’t say I’d seen too many of those.
Disney+ only recently added Enchanted to its library, and I have to admit a bit of curiosity towards that one, particularly since it was probably Adams’s breakout role.
Giselle (Adams) is your standard Disney princess. She has lots of talking animal friends, she sings songs about love, and one day, she meets and is immediately in love with and engaged to the handsome (but kinda dumb) Prince Edward (James Marsden). However, Edward’s stepmother, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), likes being queen and doesn’t want some upstart taking her throne. She’s proficient in magic, so after assuming the form of an old woman, she knocks Giselle down a well on the girl’s way to the wedding chapel, and that somehow transports Giselle to New York City. There, she meets Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey), a divorce lawyer raising a daughter (Rachel Covey) by himself. Giselle believes in true love and instant happiness and romance. Robert is a cynic who believes in pragmatism, and he’s been looking at getting engaged a second time to his girlfriend of five years Nancy (Idina Menzel in a rare non-singing role). However, there’s something infectious about Giselle that charms all around her.
Then again, it isn’t long before Edward, a chipmunk named Pip, and Edward’s sidekick Nathaniel (Timothy Spall) all follow Giselle to the real world. Edward just wants to find his beloved, but Nathaniel, smitten himself with Narissa himself, is out to take care of Giselle, and the only thing in his way is Pip (who can’t talk in the 3D world) and a lot of dumb luck.
This one is a lot of light fun. Adams is delightful (I almost said “enchanting”) as Giselle, and her general approach to life is infectious. It would seem her special “princess powers” did transfer to the real world as she gets the wildlife of the city (pigeons, rats, and roaches) to do things like clean up Robert’s apartment when she sings, and large-scale musical interludes happen in her presence. It would, however, be asking a bit too much to allow her to remain entirely unchanged. Part of the fun of the movie is despite the fairy tale feel, Giselle learns to do things like try getting to know her betrothed before she marries him. Likewise, Robert has to accept the idea of true love, especially since Giselle’s general presence seems to make other people’s relationships better.
That said, it is still basically a Disney princess movie, just one with a lot of indirect Disney references. That includes cameos by actresses who voiced Disney princess in various films…a fact that did not include Menzel at the time this movie was made but certainly does now. That means this is basically a cute, fun, but innocuous movie, one I enjoyed watching at the time, but not likely to become an all-time classic in my mind (like Arrival is). It’s a fun little diversion, but would probably work out much better for Disney fans.
Grade: B+
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