MOVIE REVIEW: Enchanted

This whimsical postmodern Disney offering marks a return to the bogus 'fish out of water' cycle, cemented in hammy 80s comedies like Splash!, Earth Girls Are Easy, Crocodile Dundee and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and 90s sequels Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Babe: Pig In The City.

In all those films, indigenous, naive characters are taken out of their usual environments and thrust into the (typically American) city for hokey comic effect. And so if you ever wanted to sadistically slap some sense into the sickly sweet, sugar-coated 'happy ever after' fairytale princess from Disney, and place her in the mean, competitive clutches of the 'real' world, then look no further than Disney's own Enchanted.  

Opening with all the frothy fairytale indulgence of a hundred Disney animations, (punctuated by Julie Andrews' archetypal Mother-Hen narration) we are taken to the fictionalised magical world of Andalasia, ruled over by the dreaded Queen Narissa.

We meet wholesome woodland-dwelling, lovesick daydreamer Giselle, who attracts the love of hornily narcissistic heir-to-the-throne Prince Edward – whom we have learned must not be allowed to fall in love for fear that he would replace his evil, power hungry stepmother. Prior to their wedding Giselle is pushed into a portal (by Narissa posing as an old-crone) where she reemerges (as Amy Adams) in live-action, uncaring present-day Manhattan, eventually eloping with pragmatic divorcee lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and his impressionable  six-year-old daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey).

Giselle slowly becomes distressed to learn that the city doesn't uphold the rudimentary 'happy ever after' ideals that her homeland typically endorses. But not to worry hot on her tale is heroic Prince Edward (James Marsden) whose mission is to bring Giselle back into her candy coloured environment - that is if Narissa's tubby, hapless henchman Nathaniel (Timothy Spall) doesn't get to her first.  

Half the fun of Enchanted is had through Giselle's innocence and naivety in her cold, detached, uncaring and dirty new urban surroundings. Watching her musically mustering up a slew of city rodents to clean up Robert's bachelor pad or inspiring the public of Central Park to perform a sprawling dance number, is a feast to the tainted eyes (even if it's all been done before in Mary Poppins).

The other half of the fun is had through the self-conscious dig at Disney – "A date! What's a date?" ponders Prince Edward – in addition to the egotistical pratfalls of Marsden's handsome but characteristically insipid knight (the one you always wanted to die a sudden and painful death in the Disney films), and a gleefully over-the-top performance from Susan Sarandon as Queen Narissa, who induces some overdue threat back into the sugar-plum spectacle.   

While the flick may pull itself apart (or back together again as the case may be) at the predictable climax, it still makes a fleetingly welcome and often quite amusing alternative to the self-indulgent cheesy tosh Disney usually hauls our way during the festive season.

[story by Oliver Pfeiffer]