March 18th, 2008 by Stinkhead
A lot of kids, and more importantly, a lot of adults have been talking about enjoying Disney’s animated princess thrust into real life in Enchanted, so we took a look and have a lot to tell you… plus we have a gallery of frame by frame comparisons to original Disney movies
The movie begins in an animated world, critters and princesses sing and clean together, a prince does his dashing deeds and a queen is scheming to take over the kingdom (or preserve the hold she has??) Anyway, the animation is clean and vivid Disney quality work. If you know what’s coming, you can see hints of Amy Adams, Susan Sarandon, and Cyclops from X-Men in the characters’ faces. Just as you’re counting (intentional) cliche’s and getting settled to watch an animated princess movie, our heroinne is plunged into Times Square New York City. Being Naive and two dimensional, she gets pushed around, trampled, mugged (kind of), and picked up hanging off of a bill board.
It’s amusing watching the pretty pretty princess get a small dose of “reality” (yeah yeah) because who hasn’t wanted to witness any one of our favorite Disney characters, singing about some dilemma, get smacked with but a taste of the world we deal with?
So the story is about how the evil Queen banished the lovely princess from the kingdom to prevent her from marrying the Queen’s step son and ruining her rule over all. That banishment just happens to be the world we inhabit. The prince follows and becomes human, as does a henchman under the Queen’s employ. Overall I feel the story took a back seat to the running gag of “cartoon characters in the real world.” I think they could have had a few stronger themes (such as strong female role models, and bein true to yourself) without hurting the humor, but this movie is enjoyable for young children, as they are the intended audience.
For what it’s worth, I know young girls will love this movie. My wife also thoroughly enjoyed this move. Young women who are not mothers have told me they enjoy this movie. I’m the only “dude” that I know that has seen this, and I think it was alright. By all means, there are a gajillion “girl movies” that the ladies would equally enjoy, but this one registered hight on my tolerability index. That’s right, this movie was much more tolerable, and I didn’t “hate” watching it. (I’d still rather watch 300 or Bourne anything)
Will young boys enjoy this movie? Will they learn about “taking one for the team” when girls are involved, and realize that it could be much worse? Like 10 Ways to Lose a Guy worse? Who knows.
I do have to raise a glass for poor James Marsden (Cylcops) in X-Men he lost Jean Gray to Wolverine, in Superman Returns he loses his WIFE to Superman, and in this movie, well you know if it were between him and McDreamy, who would win. Poor fella.
I also have to mention the Shrek movies, which also skewers the Disney universe quite broadly. Shrek did more skewering, where this movie (while produced by Disney) did more acknowledging. I wanted to see a little more of a nudge rather than a poke, but it was produced by Disney.
I do think that this movie will be relevant and amusing to young children in 10 years time, where as the Shrek movies will not make sense because they’re built entirely on pop culture references that are so topical they have no shelf life.
The songs weren’t awful, they were intentionally placed, which is my biggest problem with the songs in traditional animated movies (WHY are they singing now?) and dare I say a bit catchy? Being the overall story arc was just filler for jokes, I’m glad a bit more thought and effort went into the music.
For the purpose of review, we watched the Bonus Features, though not pointless, they didn’t really do anything for me. (If you want awesome bonus features, check out the Bourne series extras… nice). There were lots of out takes of the actors flubbing their lines, a handful of deleted scenes, a little about the making -of, clips available on Amazon.com)
and a music video with Carrie Underwood (don’t get your hopes up, she’s animated too)
Bottom line… will your kids enjoy it? Absolutely. Will you enjoy it? Probably. Could you do a lot worse? Unfortunately, yes.
This DVD is available now on Amazon.com
Check out this gallery of frame by frame comparisons with older Disney movies.
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Posted in 5&up, Girls, kids, Movies, review | Comments Off on Enchanted on DVD
