I was Enchanted by the Movie
Nov 25 2007

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Enchanted (2007) – Rachel Covey, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Amy Adams  

My husband and I went to see Enchanted this weekend without the kids.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but it ended up being a very cute, funny movie!

I initially suggested Stephen King’s The Mist, but my husband said The Mist looked too depressing, and he was already depressed because the The University of Texas at Austin Longhorn football team lost to Texas A&M’s Aggies this weekend, so he didn’t want to see it.  He then suggested we see American Gangster with Denzel Washington.  I said well if The Mist is depressing then how is people killing each other (on the streets of New York back in the day) not depressing?  He said that he didn’t think that kind of action was depressing.  After some annoying discussion, we settled on Enchanted.  I think he would tell you he liked it too even though it might be considered by some a teenage girl, chick flick. 

Enchanted is an attempt by Disney to bring a little bit of realism into its fairy tale stories.  I think many people now feel (and know from experience) that things don’t always work out like they do in fairy tales.  The princesses don’t always find their prince (or vice versa), princesses can rescue themselves in many cases, princes need rescuing too, princesses and princes come in all shapes, colors, and sizes.  My high-level observations:

  • Although Princess Giselle quite obviously had a life full of privilege and wanted for nothing except a handsome prince in a place where ‘happily ever after’ was the norm, when faced with adversity she adapted.  When rats, pigeons, and cockroaches heeded her call for help in New York she flinched a bit and then said ‘oh well, I’ll take what I can get’ and went on singing. She was also able to make fabulous dresses out of curtains and blankets at a moments notice (quite a trick because there was never a sewing machine in sight!).
  • Patrick Dempsey who plays Robert, a divorce attorney, seems to play characters who are as close to a real-life Prince Charming that you can get in this day and age!  Kind, caring, good-looking, smart, rich, etc.  He also plays Dr. McDreamy (a.k.a. Dr. Derek Shepherd) in Grey’s Anatomy where he is pretty much Dr. Meredith Grey’s prince charming but she doesn’t know how to accept him in that role.
  • Prince Edward was portrayed as a slightly slow, kind hearted guy.  I found this curious because Princess Giselle was smart and he was as they say ‘a little behind the eight ball.’  Maybe they did this to illustrate that a true princess not only wants good looks but smarts too.  Interestingly, he left back to fairy tale land with Nancy, Robert’s girlfriend (who they didn’t give us any reason to believe wasn’t smart) when both of them lost their loves to each of their loves.  A bit confusing but this part of the plot lent itself to the ‘happily every after’ goal of the movie.

Despite all the twists and turns, everyone still lived ‘happily ever after!’  Until of course Enchanted II comes out. 🙂   Overall it was a fun movie that had me smiling throughout mostly because of the impossibility of it all!

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