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] 

Now that it's into its second week on top of the US weekend box office, pundits are starting to call Enchanted the best Disney movie for years – and that's fighting talk for Brother Bear fanatics everywhere. Both of them.

But Enchanted's second week on top of the US weekend box office probably hasn't got that much to with how brilliant it is, rather it's an indication of how crap all the new movies that came out on Friday are. For example, would you rather watch Enchanted or a rubbish-looking film about Jessica Alba having it off with some bloke in a bath? Why, Enchanted of cour… what? Wait. People are dumb.

Enchanted is still the top movie at the weekend box office, following last week's sterling effort. Even though the weekend box office gross is 50% less than last week's, it's not difficult to see why Enchanted is proving to be such a hit. It's clear that by copying Shrek-style subversive humour, Enchanted has gone down a storm with moviegoers everywhere. So let's hope that Enchanted also copies Shrek's sequel policy, because the world is crying out for Enchanted 2, Enchanted The Third, Enchanted Goes Fourth, the Enchanted Christmas special, Enchanted: Smash And Crash Racing, Enchanted 4D and Enchanted in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party. It is crying out for all of those things. Here's this week's US weekend box office top five…

1 - Enchanted (People are already calling Susan Sarandon's performance in Enchanted as Queen Narcissa her most blood-curdling since her turn in last year's Irresistible, but they're wrong. And if you've also been unlucky enough to have seen Irresistible, well, we're frankly surprised that you haven't tried burning your face off at the sheer futility of it all) $17,023,000

2 - This Christmas (Maybe This Christmas will go down in history alongside White Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life as a must-see Christmas movie. After all, there's nothing we like after eating a big Christmas dinner than watching a bunch of sub-Tyler Perry idiots discuss their emotional problems like they're reading Chicken Soup For The Soul off an autocue. No, our mistake, there's everything we like more than that) $8,400,000

3 - Beowulf (Such is the success of Beowulf that naked computerised Angelina Jolie has decided to do her own thing and start making painfully unpopular serious-minded movies about the emotional impact of war too, meaning that in the future a computerised version of the computerised version of Angelina Jolie will be needed to remind people that they only like Angelina Jolie when she's naked) $7,882,200

4 - Awake (Following The Fantastic Four 2 and Good Luck Chuck, this is further proof that Jessica Alba is getting more and more artistically bankrupt. We should be sad, but in fact this is a time for celebration – Awake's underperformance at the weekend box office has shortened the time before Jessica Alba commits herself solely to starring in erotic thrillers by anything up to 18 months) $6,011,000

5 – Hitman (A film charting the disastrous solo career of Pete Waterman after he split up with his professional nightclub-touring partner Michaela Strachan) $5,800,000

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Weekend Box Office - Box Office Mojo 

The heavyweights of cartoon/ live-action hybrids – Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Space Jam, that thing with Paula Abdul and the chain-smoking hip-hop cat – must now all make room for Enchanted.

Disney's latest movie Enchanted is the number one movie at the US weekend box office. Oh, you know Enchanted – it's hardly as if you've been able to go more than ten seconds without seeing an Enchanted trailer, billboard or large cinema cardboard cut-out looming down at you lately, is it? But it's not just relentless promotion that's pushed Enchanted to the top of the weekend box office – Enchanted also teachers the viewer several profound socially-relevant lessons too, as shown in the Enchanted scenes where everyone mocks the midget and the chipmunk pulls a funny face. Or something.

Enchanted – the top movie at the weekend box office – is obviously Disney's attempt at Shrek-style self-parody, because it would be funny and completely original to have a member of royalty from another culture plunge head-first into modern-day New York and react strangely to everything that most people see as normal these days. Kind of like Coming To America but with that git from Grey's Anatomy instead of any black people. Here's the US weekend box office top five…

1 - Enchanted (It'd also be funny and completely original if at certain points throughout a movie, the characters kept attempting to break into song as if it was normal. Kind of like Monty Python And The Holy Grail but with that git from Grey's Anatomy instead of any funny jokes) $35,332,000

2 - This Christmas (A family of black people reuniting and discussing their feelings in forensic detail? Is it a Tyler Perry film? No, because then it'd be called Tyler Perry's This Christmas. In that respect we're beginning to learn that determining the authorship of emotional African American comedy dramas is a little like the game Simon Says) $18,600,000

3 - Beowulf (Don't forget that in terms of motion capture technology, Beowulf is ten times better than The Polar Express. That means that the next Robert Zemeckis motion capture movie will be ten times better again. Maybe he'll even get the characters' mouths to move in time with the words by then) $16,240,000

4 - Hitman (A movie based on a computer game that nobody has thought about since 2002. Maybe next year the studio will get it together and produce something more contemporary, like a movie remake of Halo 2 or Tiger Woods 2004) $13,035,000

5 - Bee Movie (Jerry Seinfeld has now done so well from Bee Movie that he's planned a second sequel, Dee Movie – about Dee Snider from Twisted Sister, Dee Dee Ramone, Dee Henderson, Jack Dee, Mikkey Dee, John Dee, Kiki Dee, Papa Dee, Daisy Dee and Waddle Dee all embarking on a hilarious computer animated adventure about the Dead End Elimination algorithm. On the river Dee. Only using words that begin with the letter D. Let's hope Bee Movie drops out of the weekend box office top five next week, because we're buggered if we're doing all that again for E Movie) $12,010,000

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Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo