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?
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.
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.
