Disney’s exit from the field of full-length hand-drawn animated movies betrayed a fundamental doubt about the company’s ability to make the movies that defined it: gorgeously rendered, impeccably styled musicals for the whole family, unabashedly saccharine and, for the modern age, almost unthinkably unironic.
Finally, with Enchanted, Disney seems to have regained their faith in, and much of their skill at, what they do best. The script gently reminds viewers that lack of irony and straightforwardness of meaning can actually be a good thing, and until the overwrought conclusion, strikes a nearly perfect tone of casual reverence to the Disney legacy.
Enchanted is the first Disney animated film where casting screen actors was essential, because the animated characters enter the real world, and fortunately they got the casting of the main character right.
It’s a performance that requires the actress to humanize the 70-year old Disney formula princess without teen beat pandering, ironic winks, or the whiff of an anti-hero.
In bringing Princess Giselle to life, Amy Adams gives a stunning, Oscar-worthy performance, every bit as gorgeous and adorable as Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, or any of her other forebears.
It’s Adams’s movie from stem to stern — a live-action actress arguing passionately for the integrity of animated children’s movies — and the rest of movie soars under her, faithful to its many influences, from fantastic Busby Berkeley musical setpieces to animal sidekicks who look straight out of Ratatouille.
The rest of the cast is fine as well: James Marsden is also well-cast (and cast to type) as the attractive, well-meaning and dimwitted Prince Edward; Patrick Dempsey effectively transitions to the big screen; Timothy Spall is reliably good as a treacherous appearance-changing servant, as he was in the Harry Potter movies; and Susan Sarandon is fine but mostly wasted as the evil queen.
It is a completely derivative movie, even more than most Disney movies, but unlike much of Disney’s recent output, it gets the derivation right. Ever since Snow White, the movie that firmly established the Disney formula for a successful, musical, sanitized, animated fairy tale, many of the best Disney movies have tapped into the familiar forms, and Enchanted winkingly embraces its unoriginality.
As a result, it’s not quite as good as the movies made at Disney’s peak, back when the rules were still being written, as it still closely follows that half-century-old decorum.
However, its humor is derived not from poking fun at the old-fashionedness of the sensibility, but in how far we are from it, how far we’ve gone from a simple belief in the saving power of true love. After all, if we can’t appreciate that, in some important way the joke’s on us.
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