Enchanted (2007)

"One hundred and sixteenth and Broadway!"

I am not well-read on the dramatic theory of romantic comedy, but one of my beliefs as a movie lover is that the genre works best when it culminates in not just the union of two partners, but the marriage of two ideologically opposed worldviews that, against all odds, find compromise or even synthesis. Viewed through that lens, it’s pretty clear why Enchanted is one of my favorite romcoms of all time, assuming you apply to it that genre label. You just won’t find a wider chasm in worldview than Disney princess and Manhattan divorce lawyer. Their happily ever after on both of their terms is all the more profound.

Enchanted is a 2007 live-action/animation hybrid from Disney with a strong lean toward the live-action side of that descriptor. It is a wonderfully calibrated tribute, filled with affection and sufficient barb to (debatably) enter “parody” territory. Kevin Lima directs, and as much as I cherish it, it’s still only my second-favorite Lima joint: A Goofy Movie will always hold that crown. Enchanted is undeniably a flawed film, but it’s a deeply charming one, and I’ve grown more convinced over time that it’s genuinely a great one.

The movie begins in the animated kingdom of Andalasia (yes; dumb name), where our heroine Giselle (Amy Adams) lives in a fantasy European woodland we recognize as ripped from a handful of Disney’s Golden and Silver Age films. She communes with woodland creatures, dreams of her Prince Charming, and gets precisely what she wants when the dashing Prince Edward (James Marsden) hears her voice, saves her from an ogre, and immediately proposes marriage. They agree to wed the next morning.

Unfortunately, Edward’s stepmother, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), isn’t too keen on losing her grip on power to a new queen, so she shoves Giselle into a magic well that lands her in the scariest place of all: the real world. Times Square, shot in expressionistic live action. Giselle’s animated glow strips away, and she’s now a fully live-action Amy Adams. There she’s discovered by Robert (Patrick Dempsey), a pragmatic divorce attorney with a young daughter and a low tolerance for whimsy. He reluctantly helps a completely hopeless Giselle get her bearings on New York, and what follows is a fish-out-of-water romcom-fairy tale mashup. As the film progresses, more characters from the initial animated segment leap into Manhattan to retrieve (or poison) Giselle. Giselle, in turn, discovers a new magic in the messiness of real-world emotions.

Right out of the gate, Enchanted is trying to win you over by giving you a vintage Disney hand-drawn animated opening. Of course, each of those descriptors (”vintage,” “Disney,” “hand-drawn”) comes with caveats and asterisks. The sequence is clearly a tribute to Disney’s early years rendered in the style of the Disney Renaissance. In 2007, traditional 2D animation had all but vanished from Disney’s output (The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh still a few years away). The prologue was not animated in house but outsourced to a studio run by Disney alum-turned-freelancer James Baxter. If you’re a toon-head, it’s obviously not quite up to Disney Renaissance quality: the backgrounds not as rich, the movement a touch stiffer, the character animation not so vivid. But it’s not bad and very easy to over-praise as fun, especially if you watched it fresh in 2007 when it was a glass of water in a desert.

That prologue is just table-setting. After the ten-minute mark, we’re almost entirely in the live-action world. Once Giselle emerges from a sewer into Manhattan, Enchanted shifts into a wacky romantic comedy about how to reckon with storybook romance in the harsh real world. Giselle, all radiant optimism and naivete, believes in love at first sight and the magic of true love’s kiss. Robert believes in custody battles, prenups, and carefully planned living arrangements. It would have been easy to make Robert a “love is a myth” curmudgeon; instead, it paints him in love as well, with Nancy (a tuneless Idina Menzel) but in an emotionally throttled, slow paced, incessantly practical grown up relationship.

It’s a rich premise, and one the film explores with more thoughtfulness than you might expect from its parody ambitions. The dynamic between Giselle and Robert is less about spoofing or endorsing fairy tale magic than it is testing its mettle against reality. What does “true love” mean when you’ve been abandoned to be a single dad? What is “happily ever after” look like tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow? The movie makes space for its characters to ponder these questions, albeit in terms comfortable for a family movie. That, in fact, makes up the bulk of the film, as there is not much story here: The plot is mostly a parade of cartoon archetypes popping into Manhattan and doing their schtick until everyone winds up at the big royal ball. But because the core idea of fairy tale logic vs. cold reality is so clearly and earnestly explored, the thinness of the story is more space to expand its gags and character dynamics.

And now let me get to the film’s true bit of magic: Amy Adams. This is, with only slight hyperbole, one of my favorite performances of all time. That’s not to say it’s one of the best performances ever, but it’s surely one of the few that I’ve spent the most time admiring and celebrating. (Basically, this was my Mia Goth in Pearl fifteen years earlier.) It’s crazy to think that she was the low-profile casting (despite her Oscar nomination for Junebug the previous year), while Patrick “McDreamy” Dempsey was the marketable star as a lead for Nielsen titan Grey’s Anatomy. But Lima insisted on control of auditioning and casting the lead princess. He landed on Adams despite Disney’s skepticism, and thank heavens he did. Her performance as Giselle is a miracle. She doesn’t mug or wink at the camera; she is a Disney princess come to life, fully and sincerely, but with enough connection to the cast and world surrounding her so that she’s not simply a cartoon. She sings and twirls and flutters her eyes, her line readings full of swooning idealism. Yet she also she lets real humanity gradually seep into the character as she experiences New York life. Her chemistry with Dempsey builds slowly, but when it hits — especially the scene where she gets “mad” at him and caresses his bare chest — it hits with force and electricity uncommon even in movies more singularly focused on romance. Adams steals the movie and never gives it back.

Not far behind Adams is the supporting cast, led by James Marsden in full himbo mode as Prince Edward. He is absolutely hysterical in this, committed to every outrageous gesture and grandiose line reading. He takes “clueless fairy-tale prince” as a launching point and plays it to the hilt, and I would watch a spinoff series of him trying to navigate the mundane realities of city life in a heartbeat. I also will always go to bat for any time Timothy Spall gets to be a goon, and boy is he a goon here. Eleven out of ten on the goonishness scale. Nathaniel cycles through a buffet of fake accents and disguises as he attempts to poison Giselle. Susan Sarandon, for her part, has such a small role that it’s hard to give her too much praise or blame.

On the other hand, there’s Dempsey. He’s a void of charm. He hits his marks and — importantly — he plays well off Adams and builds chemistry with her. But there’s a flatness to him that is especially glaring next to the enthusiastic glow of literally everyone else in the cast. Robert is written as guarded, but Dempsey plays him as emotionally constipated. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but it offers a great “what if”: What if Disney and Lima had cast someone with the right presence — heck, why not Marsden — to properly parry Adams.

One of the real joys of Enchanted is how playfully it imagines an Alan Menken-penned Disney musical breaking into real life. The “Happy Working Song” number is both homage to “Whistle While You Work” and hilarious gross-out gag, with rats and cockroaches scrubbing toilets with Robert’s toothbrush. But the crown jewel is “That’s How You Know,” a sprawling, sun-drenched musical number that transforms Central Park into a full-blown melting pot and Broadway fantasia, featuring Irish step-dancers, Caribbean steel drummers, and waltzing couples in dirndls. It’s gloriously over-the-top and genuinely stirring, and it makes you wonder why Kevin Lima hasn’t been tapped for more movie musicals. Lastly, there’s “So Close,” the romantic slow dance at the climax which yearns and soars and sells the Giselle-Robert romance when we most need to buy into it.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t end on that high. The final showdown — a CGI dragon fight atop a skyscraper with a rain-soaked Giselle slaying the monster — is a tacked-on misfire. It’s noisy, clunky, and thematically out of step with the rest of the film. Suddenly Giselle goes full action hero, saving Robert from Queen Narissa’s scaly clutches, and the whole thing veers into girlboss feminism, gender role turntable territory. Not only is it visually muddy and emotionally inert, it hijacks the romantic tension with a green-screened King Kong homage. It doesn’t undo Enchanted’s magic, but it puts me in a sour mood right before the credits roll.

Still, I ultimately feel about Enchanted the way I feel about Teen Beach Movie — which is to say, with inordinate affection and appreciation, in part for the ambivalence whirring under the film’s hood. The movie doesn’t force one worldview to triumph over the other; it finds room for fairy-tale romance in real life without dismissing the untidiness of the latter. Robert is right that Giselle can’t possibly feel a deep connection to Edward after a few shared lines of a duet. But Giselle is also right that love can be ineffable and magical and spontaneous. These ideas don’t cancel each other out; they are in conversation, and that tension is the heartbeat of this lovely, goofy, big-hearted film.

I’d be remiss not to acknowledge a few more of film’s quirks and warts. It has some undeniably lame gags (I could do without the potty humor like dogs peeing on legs and ogre boogers). The plot sometimes unfolds as a checklist of character dynamics rather than a story. As a princess parody, it casts a wide net but mostly catches Snow White with a bit of Sleeping Beauty. If you’re looking for incisive and detailed and coherent spoofing, it might disappoint. If you’re a regular reader of The Goods, you know I love a good counterpoint when I come in particularly high or low on a film, so I’ll point you to Hunter’s thoughtful, skeptical review over at Kinemalogue.

But to my eyes, Enchanted lives up to its name. It has uncommon magic, and it makes you believe, just a little, in fairy tales again even in this cruel and cold world.

Is It Good?

Exceptionally Good (7/8)

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Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.