Sitting in a theater filled with 8-year-old girls and their 43-year-old parents, it is easy to wonder what the Disney franchise has to offer these days. Since Disney's most recent hey-day in the early 1990s with the successes of Aladdin,"" ""The Little Mermaid"" and ""The Lion King,"" Disney movies have been a slew of disappointing animated comedies and live-action dramas, bolstered only by their Pixar successes. After more than a few manic-animal movies that bombed at the box office, it begs to be asked why Disney didn't just continue to do what it did best with its princess-themed animated dramas.
The answer may be that our audiences, even the children, have become too adult to take the happily-ever-after stuff seriously. After films like the ""Shrek"" triology and this year's ""Happily N'ever After,"" which have mocked and broken down the conventional fairy tale, our culture may have gotten too sophisticated for princesses and palaces.
It may have been an inspired decision, then, for Disney to blend fairy tale with reality in its new movie, ""Enchanted."" The film begins as an animated princess movie that transforms into a live-action one. Gleefully sweet enough to be a charming story and funny enough to please the cynics, ""Enchanted"" proves that fairy tales can exist in a more jaded, post 9/11 world.
The film stars Amy Adams (""Junebug,"" ""Catch Me if You Can"") as Giselle, a princess living in the land of Andalasia. She is awaiting her ""true love's kiss"" from Prince Edward (James Marsden), but the jealous queen (Susan Sarandon) wants to keep Giselle from taking over her throne and pushes her down a magic well, which transports her into modern day New York City. The first person to help Giselle, who is adorned in an outrageously sized wedding dress, is the cynical divorce attorney Robert, played by ""Grey's Anatomy"" star Patrick Dempsey.
The enjoyment of the situation derives from Adams' endearing portrayal of a sugary, wide-eyed princess who cleans Robert's messy Manhattan apartment by whistling for rats and vermin to help her as she sings ""A Happy Working Song"" Ã la Snow White's ""Whistle While You Work."" Robert and his young daughter's reactions to cockroaches and pigeons singing, cleaning their living room is priceless. It's an unbelievable situation played off as realistically as it could be.
When Prince Edward jumps down the well to rescue Giselle from New York City, Robert must deal with his feelings for Giselle, and Giselle must try to figure out how she can go back to Andalasia with all she has learned from ""the real world.""
Besides Adams' performance, the movie's strength lies in the unabashed, unapologetic credo that Disney's ""happily ever after"" can exist in our world. James Marsden makes the perfect gorgeous but braindead prince, convinced that his television set is a magic mirror. Susan Sarandon looks great as the evil queen and Dempsey does his best with occasional cheeseball dialogue.
If this is Disney's solution to injecting non-ironic fairy tales into today's society, it just might have worked.
