A hybrid of many kinds, Disney's self-parodying Enchanted blends old-fashioned 2-D animation with the live action world of modern day New York City and both celebrates the joyous innocence of Disney's golden age and puts the final nail in its coffin all at the same time. 3-D CGI cartoon critters are all the rage with kids these days and there's no hope in going back, at least not all the way back. The doe-eyed princess character, a Disney favorite, is nothing more than a punchline here with a saccharine sweetness that's exceedingly hard to swallow. The very presence of such an innocent makes us laugh where once legions were drawn to their mindless grace and beauty. The bold and funny switch here is that Giselle (Amy Adams), the very archetype for this princess character, is newly reborn when an evil stepmother (Susan Sarandon) exiles her to the rancid streets of NYC. Not only do we get countless gags exentuating the angular awkwardness of cewpie doll goodness when transplanted into the real world, but we also get a taste of just why such an attitude might be, in its own way, a revelation to us all. Giselle walks around blindly changing lives and starting up lively song and dance routines. We both pity her for her simplicity and resent her for it. And the greatest surprise of all, and the film's most sophisticated charm, is watching Giselle discover things like anger and heartbreak, the sort of dark things Disney princesses weren't made to feel. Pain strikes her sharply and suddenly. At first she can't even identify it. It's a surprisingly touching portrait of emotional maturation on a grand scale.All of this is made all the more likable and affecting by the sheer wondrousness of Adams' good-natured beauty and charm. An Academy Award nominee for her startlingly authentic work in the indie drama Junebug, Adam finally seems poised to make a commercial breakthrough here. Even more remarkably, she has achieved the rare feat of making many a critic's Oscar shortlist this holiday season, and for a mainstream comedy no less. She's remarkably good at expressing the kind of mousy, daftness and wild spirit that has marked nearly all Disney's leading ladies in animated features past. But there's more to it than that. Watching her, as Giselle, discovering the joys and pains of the real world, like a child taking baby steps toward adulthood, is actually one of the more well-realized dramatic subplots in any major movie this Fall. Adams is quite simply the kind of heartfelt comedienne that comes along rarely, and seldomly debuts with such fervor. She's like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde. People knew who they were before, but everyone knew who they were after.
To say that Adams is the film's only the strength would be a gross overstatement, but to say that she is its greatest strength would be utterly accurate. Elsewhere, the cotton candy fluff film bounces around happily, but not always with the same magical glow that Adams imparts. To its credit, Enchanted is admirably creative and persistently colorful. And it all leads up to a gender bender of a finish that's a welcome revolution to the slanted Disney brand. The film also stars James Marsden as a dim-witted, disappointingly one-note "prince charming" whose stupidity is funny enough but whose lack of transformation from start to finish squanders the opportunity to take the kind of chances taken here with Giselle. Patrick Dempsey also holds his own as the nice guy, single father lawyer who stumbles upon Giselle one day looking frazzled and ends up holding her hand through her exploration of our world. This also introduces another nice new dimension to Disney's 2-D simplicity: what if the princess doesn't want her prince after all?
In a world dominated by CGI cartoons with back bendingly reflexive streaks (Shrek and its many clones), Enchanted manages to compete with both a snarky clevernss and a dose of traditional Disney sweetness. It doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel but it does take it in a new direction.
Grade: B
