Sunday, August 19, 2012

Anything But.


 
Enchanted
2007
D: Kevin Lima
**********
Pros: Animation of Animated Segment
Cons: Unimaginative premise, Badly developed characters, Forced humor, Bland music, Aspect ratio of animated segment

     You know, there are a lot of bad movies whose appeal I can at least understand.  I hate Transformers, but I know that people like robots destroying things and they might also like (or can at least tolerate) Michael Bay’s crude sense of humor.  Enchanted, on the other hand, confuses me.  This movie garnered a 7.3 on IMDb and a truly absurd 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Of course, I understand that the Rotten Tomatoes rating is based on just the percentage of critics who at least found the movie adequate, but this movie isn’t even that.  In fact, I’ve never heard of much hype or enthusiasm for this movie.  People just seem to give it a pass, and I don’t understand why.  It didn't look particularly good to me, but I checked it out anyway, since maybe there might be something to all this praise.  Turns out my instincts were right.
     The movie starts out with an animated segment which hastily introduces us to the characters of the fairy tale world of Andalasia.  It’s not so much a believable world than an efficiently-run sequence meant to establish the various unrealistic tropes of the fairy tale world.  The animation is, of course, done in a traditional 2-D Disney style, so it is visually beautiful and nice to look at.  Well, it would be nice to look at if not for its being shown in a smaller aspect ratio than that of the rest of the movie.  I’m sure the effect wasn’t so annoying in the theater, but I was watching it on video, and I was looking at this:

Needless to say, having a small picture of the most visually pleasing part of movie encapsulated by letterbox bars on all sides was frustrating and distracting.  While I am aware that they were making the fantasy world distinctive from the real world and making a reference to how animated movies are commonly shown in 1.85:1 ratio while many live-action movies are in anamorphic widescreen, this was completely unnecessary.  They didn’t have to split the movie into two aspect ratios.  Not all animated movies are in 1.85:1, and not all live-action are in anamorphic widescreen.  In fact, anamorphic widescreen is usually most appropriate for movies with striking visuals, which does not apply to this film.  I can’t help but contrast this with the intro from The Incredibles, in which the characters are interviewed for television in a standard 3:4 ratio.  The picture was supposed to look like a television broadcast, with grainy, flawed color, and the small picture enhances the intentionally underwhelming appearance.  Once we got into better visuals, the movie extended itself to a better ratio, which is the exact opposite of what Enchanted did.  Also, that sequence in Incredibles only lasted about a minute and a half, while the Enchanted made me suffer through the letterboxed eyesore of its introduction for ten minutes. 
     The animated segment introduces us to Giselle (Amy Adams), who has just met her hero Prince Edward (James Marsden) and plans to marry him the following day.   This angers Edward’s stepmother, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), who tricks Giselle into entering a well which sends her to New York City (the REAL jungle!).  Finding out about this turn of events, Edward, along with Giselle’s annoying talking chipmunk friend, go in after her (the chipmunk turns into a typical CGI-cartoon-animal-in-real-world monstrosity, but he cannot speak.  I’m  not sure if that was a good thing or not).  While her friends attempt to rescue her, Giselle meets cynical divorce lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey).  Needless to say, Robert teaches Giselle about the real world, while Giselle teaches Robert to fall in love.  Awww...wait, he already was in love.  HOOoh well, we’ll get to that…
     As for the characters, let’s start out with Giselle.  Much praise was given to Amy Adams’ performance.  She was credited for a competent singing voice as well as “having fun in her role.”  I don’t want to criticize her too much, since she is indeed a talented actress.  I’ve seen her in more watchable movies like Doubt and The Fighter, and she is enjoyable in them.  The problem is Giselle.  She’s not so much a character as she is a caricature of a cartoon character.  Much like Ann Hathaway’s annoying performance in Alice in Wonderland, Adam’s heroine has spaced-out, naïve mannerisms that prevent her from being a believable character.  She’s supposedly based on a cartoon character, but even cartoon characters need to emote convincingly in order to make the audience invested.   The same story rings true for Prince Edward, who is comically oblivious to the workings of the real world during his Quixotic quest to find his beloved.  James Marsden needs a new agent.  Between this and playing a straw loser version of Cyclops in the X-Men series, I’m pretty sure the high point of his career was assassinating Abraham Lincoln in Zoolander. 
     Unlike Edward, however, Giselle eventually does adapt to the real world.  She realizes that love does not come as easily in this universe as it does the fantasy cartoon world as she and Robert fall in love.  Granted, this is character development, but there’s one thing about this that annoys me as a fan of cartoons.  By stating that an unrealistic, shallow simplification of the human condition is simply how the cartoon universe works, the movie not only seems to make the assertion that cartoons are not intelligent, but that they can’t be intelligent.  Brad Bird made a famous observation that animation is not a genre, but a medium.  This movie doesn’t seem to realize that.  In fact, the whole movie could have been animated, and they could have made their points about silly Disney Princess tropes without the dim depiction of animation in general.  This movie is supposed to be an affectionate parody of animation, but comes off as contemptuous instead.
     Giselle’s love interest, Robert, has some workings of a sympathetic character, but he ultimately falls short.  He’s a decent man whose unglamorous profession as a divorce lawyer has given him a cynical view of love.  His job experiences are established by his attempts to sort out a divorce between Clay Davis and his wife.  Despite this, he actually does have a fiancée named Nancy (Idina Menzel), who turns out to be a hopeless romantic despite Robert’s assertion that she is “smart.”  After a hackneyed misunderstanding scene in which Giselle falls on top of Robert right before Nancy walks in, Nancy is easily charmed back into the relationship just by being sent a bunch of flowers.  Right.  It’s a wonder how Mr. “I Don’t Believe in Fairy Tales” sees this woman as a compatible mate.  Hey, even the characters who are supposed to be well developed are badly developed.  Incongruous characterization aside, what really loses me on this guy is that he pulls the Mom from Miracle on 34th Street crap on his daughter.  The motivation may be understandable, but I don’t like how a parent would deprive his own child of fantasy and imagination just because they screwed up their own life and became cynical.  A responsible parent should teach children to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.  Banning the former does not guarantee that child will know how the real world works.
     Long story short, it’s a romantic comedy with a few musical numbers.  Despite Alan Menken’s reputation for excellent musical work in animated movies, I think he’s hit-or-miss.  Apparently, he thought this movie wasn’t worth much effort, so the songs in it are completely phoned-in.  Giselle’s whimsical demeanor charms more people than it should throughout the movie.  Most people would look at her behavior and think she was either mentally handicapped or crazy, but when Clay Davis and his wife see her “I’m a crazy princess and I believe in true love” act for one minute, and are mysteriously inspired to call off their divorce.  Meanwhile, Queen Narissa’s henchman Nathaniel (the always enjoyable Timothy Spall) constantly tries to murder Giselle while being thwarted by the Chipmunk.  Eventually, he gets tired of Narissa’s verbal abuse and ragequits on her, prompting her to come to the real world and get the job done herself. 
     The final faceoff between Narissa and the good guys involves the evil queen’s transforming into a cartoonish CGI dragon and carrting Robert to the top of the Woolworth Building, making it necessary for Giselle to try and save him (Hey, get it? It’s the princess saving the hero!)  The scene is an obvious homage to Malificent’s dragon form in Sleeping Beauty, so imagine that scene with all of the thrill and style absent.  As if the self-conscious referential nature of the film wasn’t heavy-handed enough, Dragon Narissa has to constantly recite tropes in a clichéd genre savvy villain fashion.  Admittedly her, final death is actually kinda cool (She gets cut open and apparently set on fire the substance that enables her fire breath).
     At the end, everyone lives happily ever after.  In addition to Robert and Giselle, Nancy ends up falling in love with Prince Edward, impressed by his simplistic personality and schmaltz.  They move to Andalasia, where one of the more frustrating scenes in the movie occurs.  During their instant wedding, Nancy’s cell phone goes off (seriously, who forgets to turn their cell phone off during their own wedding?), and, after expressing surprise that she still gets reception in an alternate universe, she throws it to the ground and breaks it.  Of course, when you run off to another world to marry a guy you hardly know, it’s not like you want to, you know, keep in touch with your freakin’ family or anything.   Funny how this movie tries deconstruct the unfortunate implications of Disney cartoons, only to add a few of its own.  Also, Nathaniel finds success as an autobiographical author, even though if his book is remotely honest, he’s publicly confessing to multiple counts of attempted murder.  Don’t you just love it when the Big Bad is defeated, and the happy ending involves the evil henchman getting off scot-free despite being in up to his neck and not having gone through any true redemption or remorse?
I'm looking at you, you creepy bastard.
     Enchanted is a movie about how the real world is smarter than the cartoon world, but really isn’t.  The characters from the real world, even though they’re supposed to contrast with the cartoon characters in their realism, are not very well-developed or believable themselves.  The movie even plays some of the bad tropes from Disney movies straight.  In addition to all the fridge logic, the movie really has no magic.  It dwells so much deconstructing the flaws of Disney Princess cartoons that it forgets to have a decent story, and the story it does have is an inane romantic comedy.  Yes, I know that these Disney cartoons tend to have some shallow tropes, but as a cartoon fan, I don’t want to see some meta junk that just points it out.  I want to see an earnest cartoon that fixes those mistakes.  I don’t want to see a movie that points out how the fantasy isn’t real or that it’s just a dream; that defeats the whole damn purpose of watching a fantasy.  Even Shrek, whose cynicism has become dated, was an actually fantasy story set in a fantasy world.  It had its share of metahumor, but it had its style and some earnestness.  It dealt with hackneyed fairy tale tropes by actually subverting them.  Enchanted mostly just lampshaded them rather than truly being subversive.  As I said before, I don’t understand why everyone gives this movie a pass.  Maybe they thought it was different because it was Disney itself making this affectionate self-parody, but to me it was just another one of those hackish cartoon-characters-in-the-real-world movies.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.   


I'm going to take the opportunity to show you why I generally do not follow what professional critics have to say.  Enchanted is in my opinion a banal, unfunny, soulless parody of the style and charm of Disney animated canon, but look how many Disney cartoons it somehow beat out on Rotten Tomatoes, and, yes, I would take any of these over Enchanted, including Pocahontas and Home on the Range.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 97%
Pinocchio 100%
Fantasia 98%
Dumbo 97%
Bambi 91%
Cinderella 96%
Alice in Wonderland 80%
Peter Pan 83%
Lady and the Tramp 89%
Sleeping Beauty 88%
101 Dalmatians 97%
The Sword in the Stone 74%
The Jungle Book 86%
Robin Hood 55%
The Rescuers 85%
The Fox and the Hound 69%
The Great Mouse Detective 81%
Oliver & Company 44%
The Little Mermaid 90%
The Rescuers Down Under 65%
Beauty and the Beast 92%
Aladdin 92%
The Lion King 89%
A Goofy Movie 57%
Pocahontas 56%
The Hunchback of Notre Dame 73%
Hercules 84%
Mulan 86%
Fantasia 2000 82%
The Emperor’s New Groove 85%
Atlantis: The Lost Empire 49%
Lilo & Stitch 86%
Treasure Planet 68%
Home on the Range 54%
The Princess and the Frog 84%
Winnie the Pooh 91%


Disney cartoons not your cup of tea? Well, here are more movies that, according to Rotten Tomatoes, are not as good as Enchanted:  
Blade Runner, Gladiator, The Big Lebowski, Requiem for a Dream, Heat, The Crow, Ben-Hur, Return of the Jedi, Dr. Zhivago, The Land Before Time, Miller's Crossing, The Man with Two Brains, Inception, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Doubt, Network, Hard Candy, Goodbye Lenin!, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Fly, Caddyshack, Equilibrium, Batman, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Duellists, The Thing, Where the Wild Things Are, 28 Days Later, A Scanner Darkly, RoboCop, The Matrix, The Shawshank Redemption, The Nutty Professor, Army of Darkness, The Deer Hunter, Black Hawk Down, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1, 1984.  

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