Enchanted (2007)

I am officially in love with Amy Adams. And don't bother telling my wife because she already knows. I fell in love with her a few years ago when I saw Junebug. Here, she radiates as the princess Giselle.
Adams is the best thing about Enchanted, a charmer of a Disney update with some other good things going for it, too. James Marsden, for instance, is making me secretly hopeful for a new Danny Kaye or Gene Kelly...some kind of modern version of the debonair guy with the great voice who excells at screen musicals. And Marsden is in the lead for that job right now, having knocked my socks off in Hairspray and now here.
Adams, it seems, is also worthy of the film musical throne, perhaps a 21st Century Julie Andrews. I think we need one of those.
As for the rest of the film, well, it's cute. As a long-time Disney fan who has been teased for my not-so-macho love of wonderful Disney songs and scores, I was treated once again here to the work of the great Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. I actually wish there had been about two more songs.
I also wish that the film had taken it's "meta" status a little further. Sly little moments like when "Part of Your World" played as muzak in a law firm lobby while Adams stared intently at a fish tank were not plentiful enough. It was the job of Enchanted, I thought, to mock the conventions of the Disney animated musical while simultaneously recreating one in the real, live-action world. At a time when traditional animation has bowed to Shrek-crap and soulless digital cartoons, what a brilliant idea it was to one-up the animation world by bringing it to the real one and keeping the animated feel!
And yet, I wanted more...more songs, more in-jokes, more self-awareness and self-parody. If nothing else, however, I'm thankful for what I did get, and I'm even more thankful for Adams. I'm most thankful of all for a film that afforded me a wonderful holiday afternoon date with my almost six-year-old daughter, who loved every minute of this film.

3.0 out of 4