Fairies wear boots: A review of ‘Enchanted’
We should always celebrate Christ-mas or at least the weeks leading up to it by making it a point to try and be happier. Or maybe attempt to be at little bit more cheerful to one another. Get into the spirit of the season. Goodwill towards mankind and all that c**p.
My apologies for not taking it further along and notching up a respectable word-count before abandoning the bonhomie and the ho-ho-ho’s. The fact is if you’ve cajoled by well-meaning people to watch something as disgusting and awful as Disney’s new film Enchanted you’d feel as pissed and cheated. Often such endorsements come with a caveat: “You don’t have to think. It’s mindless fun. Just relax…” And therein lies the rub. Those very words can and should be read as a warning rather than a come-on. Lobotomies never ever live up to the hype.
Should I bother even with a perfunctory synopsis? Ah well, it’s supposed to be a send-up of every Walt Disney classic from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty in that they transport their 2D characters into modern-day New York. Wonderful. Post-modern irreverence is really the fashion these days, isn’t it? The creative minds in the company’s department probably dreamed this up in an effort to bring their movies, their canon so to speak, up-to-speed with 21st century sensibilities. If everyone else is doing it, why don’t we?
But the satire is lost when it isn’t even clever. The lead character Giselle or any of the characters are not in any way enchanting; the story apart from its initial premise isn’t either. The problem of course is that Disney’s animated films — the classics such as those already mentioned and a few others in later years — do manage this level of enchantment: awesome, terrible, silly, magical… an apple too red to be good, Maleficent already evil-incarnate as a monster seething above the baileys and keep of that enchanted castle or a room full of dancing brooms. Compared to that, Enchanted is colorless and bland, featuring two-dimensional acting from Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey and even Susan Sarandon that pale in comparison to their animated counterparts.
Perhaps the true irreverence of the exercise is really to be seen in the shoddy production value, grossly evident even in the animation. Forget about the awful cinematography, the sloppy writing and uneven direction of the live-action parts, but the very thing that the company is known for? For Disney, it’s unforgivable for them to be lazy and complacent in this regard. One wonders what old Uncle Walt will think once they thaw out his cryogenically-frozen head and screw it back on. (Hope they place it on the executive that green-lighted this s**t after beheading him. Maybe they can place lead actress Adams down as a second option.)
Do yourself a favor and forget this waste. Consider it an early Christmas present from me.
