Enchanted

Enchanted, directed by Kevin Lima, is a funny and amusing, though not outstanding, film. A quick synopsis is Giselle (Amy Adams) falls in love with Prince Edward and is set to marry him in what is a stereotypical Disney ending. Edward's mother, the evil Queen, will lose her thrown if her marries so she sends Giselle into the "real" world and the Prince comes to save her. In the real world Giselle finds herself lost and without friends and has to contend with the difficulties of strange emotions such as anger and hate.

The movie, taken in small snapshots, is wonderful. The animation is particularly good. One scene that really caught my attention was when the Queen's minion was talking to her from the real world and she sent him poison apples. The apples seemed to flawlessly transition from cartoon apples in the Queen's hand to real apples in the cooking pot. The animators also did a really good job on Pip the talking chipmunk and the animals that Giselle talks to and has help clean the Robert's apartment (Robert is a lawyer that eventually befriends Giselle in the real world). In the scene most of the animals seen are real, trained birds and rats. The only exceptions are the animals that interact with objects. They are animated. The animation was very good and just watching the film for the first time there were only a couple instances where the animals stood out as obviously animated. Amy Adams also did a great job of acting like she was talking to the animated animals. There was also an animated dragon at the very end which reminded me a lot of Saphira from Eragon. Overall I was very impressed with the technical aspects of the film.

I must admit that the music was very good and really helped the movie flow along. Also subtle background music that played when a character from the animated realm talked helped emphasize their differences from the real world. Some of the music was changed slightly from the typical Disney music, which helped the film seem more of a satire of the Disney process. However, if you look closely at the movie you find that it really is just a more typical Disney movie in disguise. The girl still finds the man of her dreams, everyone is justly punished or rewarded, and the main characters live happily every after with things resolved in a nice little package. Perhaps film noir is making me slightly cynical, but I would have preferred a more realistic ending if this was truly going to be a viable critique on the Disney process.

The one thing I didn't really like about the film was that altogether it didn't make a very compelling story. The characters from the animated world, except for Giselle, were very flat. The prince's egotism and self-absorption got especially tiring after awhile. There were several scenes that were brilliant as stand alone scenes like cleaning up the apartment or walking through the park, but they lacked a clear connection and relevance with the storyline. So all in all I felt it was a good movie with a lot of laughs, but probably not something I am going to see again.