Movie Log: Enchanted

My boys and I thought it was about time to see another movie in the theater this week, so we had to choose between Bee Movie, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, and Enchanted. I had nothing really against the first and third, but Magorium looked like a massive dose of treacle that I wanted to avoid at all costs. Thing 1 was mildly in favor of Magorium (I think because it was rated G, and so he thought it would have nothing to make him upset; he is an old softy, as I've said several times), and Thing 2 wanted Enchanted. So I cast the deciding vote, and Enchanted it was.

I hadn't anticipated, however, just how intensely girly a movie it would be. But when our animated heroine, Giselle, started burbling about "true love's first kiss" at about the one minute mark, I began to get a notion...

I've seen some media accounts calling Enchanted a vast departure for Disney, as if it's a wholesale mocking of the company's history. This is balderdash; Enchanted is mild in its jibes, and the only myth it even tries to demolish is that true love is necessarily found with the prince. (And, perhaps, that "love at first sight" must take place in an instant rather than over the course of maybe twenty-four hours.) Enchanted is actually the latest piece of Disney's savvy Princess Strategy; they've realized that explicitly "Disney" products can't compete very well for the attention of boys above the age of seven or so in our modern culture, so they're concentrating all of their impressive firepower on girls. I actually started to suspect how girly Enchanted was when I looked around the theater during the previews and realized the Things and I were the only all-male group in the place (and they were probably a majority of the boy-children at that show, too).

So the movie that starts out in a traditionally cell-animated world (blandly pretty and serviceable) , and then the evil stepmother/queen sends our heroine Giselle to our world, from which she's expected never to return. She reacts to New York City like a particularly sheltered Disney heroine would, which -- since this is a movie for kids -- does not get her carted off to the booby hatch, but is the source of much humor. She meets a divorced lawyer (played by someone my wife refers to as "McDreamy" -- please, do not explain this to me) and his cute daughter, but just wants to get back home to fantasyland and Prince One True Love. (That's not his name, but since when does the prince's name -- or anything about the prince other than the fact that he's really good looking and a prince -- actually matter?)

Anyway, Prince Whatzisname follows her to New York, and is swiftly followed by his own sidekick, who is secretly in the pay of the evil queen. Princey has his own adventures, and the actor (James Marsden) is actually quite good at broad, silly comedy. But the plot is really about Giselle -- this is a girls' movie, remember? -- and so we keep coming back to her. Eventually, they meet up again, but the real world has changed Giselle...but, of course, there is a happy ending.

Oh, and did I mention that it's a musical?

It's a musical.

It's not a bad musical, though the songs are all deliberately over-the-top. But it does make one absolutely stupid mistake: if you're making a musical, and you cast Idina Menzel (as the Other Woman, basically), and then don't give her anything to sing, you are a deeply stupid person.

And, if the main plot of the movie bores you at any time, you can play spot-the-Disney reference, since several thousand of them appear to have been crammed into every nook and cranny of the movie.

I really don't think Enchanted was made for families like mine, but we enjoyed it. And Thing 2 has already said that he wants to have it on DVD eventually. So, maybe it's not just for girls.