Enchanted

In film, it hasn't been cool be to happy for happiness' sake for a very long time. A fairy tale? No way can that be done. Not after Shrek. Well, Disney has retaliated back with a semi-parody/loving tribute to their own princess films.

Enchanted is about Giselle (Amy Adams) who is a princess who only wants to be married and share true love's first kiss. She sings songs with her animals and dances and lives in a tree and is a cartoon. One day she meets Prince Edward (James Marsden) and within that day they are to be married. Edward has an evil stepmother (Susan Saradon) who knows that when Edward gets married, she will no longer have power. Thus, she along with her cronie (Timothy Spall) send Giselle to New York. There she meets Robert Phillip (Patrick Dempsey) and her love with Edward is tested as she opens up his eyes and he opens up hers.

Every actor is clearly having the time of their life in this movie. I've never been a Patrick Dempsey fan, and I still feel he is the weakest link in this film. It isn't that he is bad, in fact he is very good. We see him go from an asshole to somebody we really do like and care about: I just hate his voice and think it is almost comically high pitched. Everyone else is reveling in playing their archetype of the princess genre. Susan Saradon has always been great at playing a bad girl and now she gets to play the ultimate evil woman. Timothy Spall should only play cowardly side kicks because he does very good everytime he does it. James Marsden plays Prince Edward with charm and a sence of idiocy that is exactly how a cartoon prince would appear in real life. Then their is Amy Adams as Giselle. From the moment you see her as a cartoon, you know you are going to love her. She is pretty, sweet and just adorable. From the first moment you see her you want to see her win and you never want to see her sad. She also has a pretty good singing voice.

Which is a great thing about this movie: the music. This is something that Shrek hasn't been able to properly parody yet, maybe their pop-music compliation soundtracks have been their way of trying to do that, but it hasn't worked. Disney has recruited Alan Menken again to do the music and he adds even more classics to Disney's repertoir. I will garuntee you that "True Love's First Kiss," "Happy Little Cleaning Song" (hilarious) and "How Does She Know You Love Her?" (once more, hilarious and parodies how musicals break out in movies while being an extremely charming song) will all be remembered for a long time after and will be playing in Fantasyland when you go to Disneyland.

This is a truly wonderful movie. Unlike the Shrek movies which have made their money on smashing this type of movie, Enchanted uses the cliches of the genre to generate their comedy and characters. It works great as we don't just like our main characters because they aren't anything like what we are used to, but we are reminded why princess movies from Disney are classics: it is because they are downright charming.