Enchanted is a unique Disney film that starts off like your typical Disney princess animated movie. The heroine, Giselle (Amy Adams), lives in an animated fantasy world filled with talking animals, trolls, evil queens who practice sorcery, and - of course - a handsome prince that she (literally) falls in love with. No, seriously, she actually falls out of a tree, lands on his lap, and is immediately in love with him. If that sounds goofy, that's good because that's exactly the point. The first ten minutes of the film is Disney making fun of its own princess movies by condensing the plotline of said princess movies into ten minutes. The twist comes after the prince's evil stepmother, Narissa (Susan Sarandon), sends Giselle to a "place where there are no happy endings," which turns out to be the live action land known as New York City. After this, the film because a fish out of water comedy as Giselle learns about life in the real world with the help of a lawyer named Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and his daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey). Meanwhile, Prince Edward (James Marsden) enters the land of New York City to find his missing bride, but Narissa sends her loyal servant Nathaniel (Timothy Spall) to kill Giselle before Edward can find her.
This film contains every Disney princess movie cliche in the book, and it knows it. The film constantly pokes fun at these cliches, pointing out how stupid some of these cliches actually are. It's hilarious and works perfectly. But even more hilarious is the antics of the fairy tale characters as they interact with the real world. The jokes range from a chipmunk who could talk in fairy tale land learning it can't talk in New York to Giselle thinking that a castle on a billboard is an actual castle. Of course, these jokes would not work as well without the hilarious reactions of New York residents to the antics of the fairy tale characters. From Robert's perplexed reactions to Giselle and a bus driver's reaction to Edward stabbing her bus, these reactions are spot on and well-played.
Despite the humorous way the movie sometimes treats love, it does raise questions as to the nature of true love. This is generated by the contrast between Giselle and Robert. Giselle thinks love is just warm and fuzzy feelings that you get when you're with a person, and Robert - who has already had a marriage that went wrong - prefers a more rational path to marriage. He doesn't believe that true love exists and that a good marriage depends more on the compatibility of the spouses than on a warm and fuzzy type of love. Ultimately, the film concludes that true love is really something between these two extremes, a combination of warm and fuzzy feelings and one's compatibility with their partner. This is a much more biblical view of love than the view typically upheld by Disney princess movies, and that combined with the good, clean humor of the film makes this film a worthwhile viewing experience.
Note to parents - this film may not be appropriate for some children. Check out Plugged In Online's review of this film here to see if this film is right for your children.
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