At the Movies: Enchanted
Enchanted is a very modern but classically Disney fairy tale. It wants to have its cake and eat it too, and, for the most part, succeeds. Basic plot: an animated Disney princess heroine is sent to New York City by a wicked witch, less she marry the handsome prince and thereby remove the witch from power as the Queen. What makes the film really work are a) the actors and b) the wicked magic the film manages to conjure up, in brief fits and spurts.
I can't say enough good things about Amy Adams. She's pitch-perfect as a 2D heroine that develops in to a 3D person. The moment when she touches the mostly boring Patrick Dempsey's chest hair for the first time is amazing feat of acting: pure and innocent, sexual and transformative all at once. She's hilarious and moving and absolutely perfect throughout. Without her, this movie would have fallen flat on its face.
James Marsden is also very, very good as the dimwitted prince who follows his love through the portal to this world and to rescue her. He's charming because he doesn't think and just is. He never needs to go beyond being a 2D hero, and that makes everything he does just simply work.
The magic the film manages to conjure up is really contained in two scenes: the hilariously twisted cleaning song, wherein the heroine summons the local animals to help her clean house. As the film is set in NYC, pigeons, rats and cockroaches show up. It's utterly bizarre and, again, pitch perfect against the Disney cannon. The other scene of magic is much more personal, and probably specific to me. There's a "Kiss the Girl"-style number celebrating the art and displays of romance that wanders through Central Park, sucking in more and more people until there's a standard Disney park parade marching towards the fountain of Bethesda. The song isn't particularly great (none of them are, though they sound like vintage Disney), but the sequence captures, for me, just how magical Central Park in the spring/summer can truly be. It's truly an otherworldly place, stepping out of the hustle of NY traffic, and in to this calm and beautiful respite from the rest of the work. It has its own rough magic, and the sequence, set in this place, wouldn't have worked anywhere else.
On the downside: Susan Sarandon. Looking utterly out of place and struggling with the basic physicality of her character, she ended looking up like a reject from a Cher concert in faux Bob Mackie. And the tacked-on, CGI-heavy climax featuring her character didn't help much either.
It would have been nice if the heroine could have not needed any prince and just went her own way to discover her own life in New York, but this being Disney, that's not to happen. Too bad she had to end up with Dr. McBoring.
