Enchanted
A fairy tale princess gets sent into modern-day New York City and must find out if fairy tale love exists in the real world.
It's hard for a movie as heavily marketed up as Enchanted to live up to all the hype. Disney was using its fame, star power, and unprecedented success of their Disney Princess line to promote this movie as their next big classic. Considering that much of the film consisted of references to past movies and jokes made in good fun, my expectations were not too high, and they were perfectly met without being exceeded. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. I was expected to be entertained, but not to be given something that would be just as good as the classic animated Disney films.
Just as I was expecting, the opening animated sequence was by far my favorite part of the movie. Over a period of about ten minutes, everything from a good animated princess movie was crammed in for a beautiful explosion of classic Disney magic. I loved the colors, the music, the movements, and the artwork. Everything was just gorgeous and it seemed to end all too soon. In animated form, Giselle reminded me of many different classic princesses, though the style of the animation actually reminded me a little more of Richard Rich (The Swan Princess) than Disney. The only thing that annoyed me about the animated sequence was Pip, the chipmunk. His voice and attitude seemed entirely out of place in such a gentle and serene world, and his voice was extremely annoying. It's definitely a good thing he couldn't speak in the real world.
Once the movie turned live-action, it started to go downhill a little. Giselle wasn't quite as ditzy in context as she seemed from the trailer. Well, she was but it made more sense. Before I saw the movie, I thought that her personality clashed with Robert's so the potential relationship between them didn't make sense, but now I see it was more a case of him thinking she was a bit loony for thinking her fairy tale Prince Edward was going to come rescue her. Once that got confirmed, well, there was really nothing else that made them seem incompatible.
Except, of course, for the fact that Giselle was engaged to Prince Edward, and Robert had been dating Nancy for five years. Personally, I felt that this was the weakest part of the story. After all that talk about how love works differently in the real world than it does in the fairy tale world, there was an awfully small to non-existent portion of the movie dedicated to explaining why certain relationships between the leading characters did or did not work out. All of it was just put in as a given because certain characters were at certain places at certain times and you were just supposed to know what was going to happen because it was obvious. Being that this was supposed to be a romantic comedy, I didn't think there was too much development in the "romantic" part, and the "comedy" part was pretty much all given away in the commercials.
That said, some of the things I loved about this movie were the costumes (Giselle and her forest friends are ridiculously talented seamstresses), the music (Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz are gods), and the villains. Narissa was a fantastic villainess--beautiful, cunning, and menacing enough to rival even Maleficent. She gave me goosebumps the second time she showed up as the hag, and her determination to defeat Giselle at all costs so she could remain queen was fabulously developed. Nathaniel, for a fairly minor character, was also surprisingly well developed, and in fact, I thought his characterization was even better than that of some of the lead characters. His growth after being whole-heartedly devoted to Narissa was very impressive, and he seemed to learn even more than Giselle by the end of the movie after the time he spent in the real world.
A character I wish we could have known more about was Nancy. We know almost nothing about her aside from the obvious--she's Robert's girlfriend. In order for the story to be fully formed and make sense, I think she should have had more screen time so we can learn about her life and her personality. It's easy to like Morgan, Robert's adorable daughter, and as Morgan's potential stepmother I would have liked to know what Morgan liked and didn't like about Nancy and why she would have or wouldn't have wanted her as her new mother. Prince Edward's character does not grow or change after his experience in the real world, so it isn't as important to develop him because, well, he doesn't develop, and we learn everything we need to know about him from the animated sequence at the beginning. However, I don't feel like I know Nancy as well as I should. Maybe the problem was that the movie was too short and there just wasn't enough time to develop everything that needed to be developed. It was also disappointing that she didn't have a song because a lot of Wicked fans will probably be seeing this movie specifically for Idina Menzel.
There were a lot of references to previous Disney films, but they were nothing more than that--references. They were not jokes or spoofs or parodies. They were just things that you might catch if you were very familiar with animated Disney classics. There were references to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. My absolute favorite reference that had me giddy and laughing was the one to The Little Mermaid. Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, had a fairly large role in the film for just a small cameo. She was in more than one scene and had just the right amount of lines for her role to be significant. I felt that her character, Sam, was worked into the story perfectly, and there was a very direct reference to The Little Mermaid when Giselle encounters Sam that had me laughing my head off. You just need to have a good ear to catch it. ;) Jodi also used her Ariel voice at one point to mock Giselle, which was equally hilarious. I didn't notice Paige O'Hara, the voice of Belle at all despite hearing she would be in the movie, but Judy Kuhn, the singing voice of Pocahontas, had a rather hilarious one-liner as a resident of Robert's apartment complex.
Overall, this was a very cute and enjoyable movie, but I wouldn't put it up there with the animated Disney classics. Maybe if it were longer there would have been more time to develop some of the characters and relationships, though I wouldn't have had a problem with this if part of the movie didn't seem to be about Giselle learning that she needs to get to know people before she falls in love with them. If nothing else, I would recommend seeing this movie for the animated sequence, the costumes, and the five fabulous songs that I had already heard online beforehand, but I still thoroughly enjoyed them. There will probably never be another musical team as talented as Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. In closing, go see this movie for some light entertainment because by the end, there's no way you can leave the theater without feeling happy.
