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Laurie’s Reel Thing Chick Flick Review: Enchanted Is Enchanting

Forget waiting around for Prince Charming. Real young women can make their own fairy tales come true, or so says this latest Disney “happily ever after” flick with an up-to-the-minute twist.

I admit it: I wasn’t too keen on seeing a PG-13 Disney offering, the first part of which is depicted in 2D animation a la Beauty & The Beast, Cinderella, and all of the others classics which took up permanent residence in my VCR when my daughter was younger. But my trusted fellow flickophile Ivy swore that Enchanted, a musical comedy/fantasy that mixes animation, computer wizardry, and live action, was worth hitting the multi-plex for. And she was right.

This tongue-in-cheek parody updates the traditional "fairy tales do come true" formula to good—and often charming—effect. Disney takes one of their trademark cartooned princesses—you know, the kind who’s pining for the one true love with whom she’s spent a grand total of only three-a-half-minutes—and plops her into Manhattan’s Times Square. It’s at this point in the movie (thankfully for me, as it put my sister’s “Is this all a cartoon?” grumblings to rest) that animation switches over to live action, with actress Amy Adams bringing our heroine Giselle to life.

Add in a real prince of a regular guy, dreamy Patrick Dempsey, a cardboard cut-out young royal out to save his damsel-in-distress, and some hysterical remakes of the Disney big song-and-dance routines that substitute NYC-native singing rats and cockroaches and pigeons for sweet forest animals, and you get the idea. Spot-on performances by Idina Menzel and Susan Sarandon, fantastic music and lyrics by my faves, Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, and lots of in-jokes and sly send-ups of Disney’s own stock-in-trade storybook romances will enchant viewers of all ages, making the movie perfect for a mother-daughter (and in my case, aunt) outing.

This mother and daughter actually had lots to talk about in the car coming home. While I thought the take-away was along the lines of “You really have to know someone well before committing to them and vise versa,” my daughter’s was that “young women today don’t have to wait around for a knight in shining armor to make their own dreams come true" citing the scene in the movie where the man is saved by falling into the princess’s arms for a change. Either way, it’s all good. And this pair of moviegoers lived happily ever after—until one hit up the other for a loan, that is. ‘Cause even modern young women need a little help making their dreams come true.

PS: Have you seen it? If so, what did you think?