Sunday, December 16, 2007

Movie Review: Enchanted

My daughter and I went to see "Enchanted" yesterday and we had such a blast. As a "princess mom", I'm intimately acquainted with many of the Disney stories. If there's a feminine character with a tiara in it, even with a fishtail or as an ogre, we've got it. For my own Princess, she recognized a lot of similarities and had fun with it.

I loved the tongue-in-cheek approach the movie took toward Princess stories. Annika and I both laughed a lot, and she did a loud "eeeyyouuu" at one kissing scene.

Patrick Dempsey is always delightful to watch, so no complaints here, but I think his role could've been better. The character for Nancy was not as developed as it should've been and threw away actress Idina Menzel; she played Maureen in "Rent". Even Annika commented on that.

Amy Adams was really good because she captured the wide-eyed innocence and she transformed from an animated character to a human. Kinda sucks to be James Marsden because he got jilted at the alter in "The Notebook" too!

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Nods to other Princess movies (Spoilers!)

Sleeping Beauty: Living in the round house in the woods. Singing with the animals. Transforming objects into a human form. The evil queen turns herself into a dragon at the end. Magical swords. Magic kiss to break the spell. Prince Edward is pretty much modeled after Prince Philip, who doesn't do much but sing and talk about true love at first sight (or first hearing as it is).
Cinderella: Giselle calls upon the animals to help her clean, scrub the floors and get dressed (tie bows). Lost shoes.
Snow White: poison apples, evil queen, dwarf references, Magic kiss to break the spell.
Beauty & The Beast: I was dying with laughter when Giselle was singing in Central Park, just like Belle. And, the final ballroom scene is just like B & B where the camera swirls around the couple exactly the same way! Plus, Robert is donning a blue suit just the Beast. The last scene on top of the building is similar to the B&B as well. In the Central Park dance scene there's someone dressed in belly dancer outfit with a candelabra on her head (oh, Lumiere, wherefore art thou for an elaborate dance sequence!)
The Little Mermaid: While surfing for photos, I learned that Jodi Benson who was the voice of Ariel played the secretary and if you listened carefully, "Part of Your World" is playing in the background. The whole fish tank thing is a tribute to Little Mermaid.
Aladdin: The only similarity I could see besides the belly dancing candelabra, was Giselle brushing her hair in front of a mirror. Jasmine tends to do that often ; really, what else can she do all locked up in the palace?
Shrek: Big, green, booger-faced ogre muttering "true love"
The Princess Diaries: Julie Andrews is the narrator. Of course.

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If you've seen the movie and know of anymore let me know. It is inevitable that we will be buying the DVD for this. It's just sweet and charming, and it's great to see a movie with Annika. I think 6 is a perfect age for this movie. Any younger, then some of the irony would've gone over their heads.

Anyway, here's a parting shot of Patrick .. never hurts a blog.


2 comments:

ZenDenizen said...

People Magazine is blind for failing to put Patrick on their cover (I'm still annoyed at the Matt Damon thing). Anyway, James Marsden got jilted in X-Men and Superman, too!

Anonymous said...

Patrick was jilted in "Sweet Home Alabama", so maybe James should just hang in there ;-)