Enchanted

This is really the definition of "light entertainment," and seriously, I am still smiling about it now. After getting in the way of an Evil Queen, a fairytale princess is cast into an alternate reality--the real world as we know it--and must survive there until her rescue by her Prince Charming. Hmm! From the trailer I saw, my guess was that "Enchanted" was a one-joke show, a series of gags about how fairytale magic falls on its face in the real world. That Disney has managed to squeeze at least four or five good jokes out of the idea, and mixed in a few sprinkles of profundity on top of that, is something of an achievement. As a romp, it works fairly well, and it delivered quite a lot more than I was expecting.

This is a risky film to make, and Disney gets points for having the guts to unleash this oddity on the holiday season. It's a fun film that isn't afraid to go, occasionally, in weird and startling directions.

The intersection of the two worlds--the world of faith and magic, and the world of disillusionment and hard reality--creates the expected comedic drama at first. Then the two opposing realities begin to influence and change each other in unsettling and stimulating ways that may surprise the audience. The ideas aren't fully developed, but a crucial detail was attended to at the wrap-up that satisfied me--the main characters succeed mainly because they are able to grow beyond their previous conceptions of themselves.

Along the way of telling this story, we get to see a very challenging film production featuring two distinct worlds and their accompanying designs, and the intermingling of these two worlds. It's occasionally heavy on visual effects and animated sequences, but the effects are always story-driven and never gratuitous--a surprising enough thing nowadays that it's worth taking note of. Strong film-making skills, with an old-school sensibility, are at work.

My rating gets an extra point for an audacious, overblown MGM-style singing/dancing sequence, the kind that is rarely seen in theatres nowadays. Go see it!