The movies like to promise girls and women a happily ever after, but it’s unusual that one delivers an ending that makes you feel unsullied and un compromised. “Enchanted,” an unexpectedly delightful revisionist fairy tale of all places, Walt Disney Pictures, doesn’t radically rewrite every bummer story about girls of all ages and their dreams. But for a satisfying stretch, this film works its magic largely by sending up, at times with a wink, at times with a hard nudge, some of the very stereotypes that have long been this company’s profitable stock in trade.
It’s a gently concept, characterized by a script that falters only in the clinch, some agile if overly timid direction and a strong cast led by a superb Amy Adams. As Giselle, an otherworldly princess who falls to Earth (worse yet, Times Square), Ms. Adams proves to be an irresistibly watchable screen presence and a felicitous physical comedian, with a gestural performance and an emotional register that alternately bring to mind the madcap genius of Carole Lombard and Lucille Ball. Ms. Adams doesn’t just bring her cartoon-ish character to life: she fills Giselle’s pale cheeks with blood and feeling, turning a hazardously cute gimmick into a recognizable, very appealing human confusion of emotion and crinoline.
The once upon a time begins with the animated Giselle, a pastel creation with a pointy chin and trilling voice, merrily chattering with her furry and feathered woodland friends. Although she isn’t scrubbing down the front steps in rags and clogs, Giselle has clearly been conceived, more thematically than visually, along the same lines as classic Disney heroines like Snow White and Cinderella. She’s pretty, she’s perky, she’s flat (well, not entirely), and when she sings about her one true love, it isn’t long before he emerges on horseback, answering her call with a Stephen Schwartz and Alan Menken refrain of his own. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the chapel they would go if not for his wicked, witchy stepmother.
One thing quickly leads to another until Giselle tumbles down a well and lands in New York, her drawn figure suddenly made flesh. There, amid the bustling and hustling, she finds shelter with a guarded single father, Robert (Patrick Dempsey), and his motherless daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey). Melodrama looms, mostly and somewhat unfairly because of another woman (Idina Menzel), but the director Kevin Lima keeps the tone light and playful while also scaling some charmingly dizzy heights with two musical numbers, one a rousing, complexly choreographed song and dance in Central Park with what looks like the entire Broadway dance corps, the other a brilliantly surrealistic number with Giselle and some urban critters. You may never look at a water bug the same way again.
In some ways the film never recovers from the anarchic joys of this particular musical number, which is so flat-out bizarre and grotesquely funny — and executed straight, without knowing smirks — that it threatens to send the story off the rails. Part of this number’s pleasure comes from the naughty thrill of watching a beloved, near-sacred film — in this case, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Disney’s sublime first animated feature — gleefully turned upside down and inside out. The old Warner Brothers animators used to take rollicking aim at Disney on occasion, but it’s something else to watch Disney send up Disney, as it were, and do it with such sneaky, breezy irreverence. It’s “Snow White” as redone by John Waters.
It would be too much to expect Disney to wholly dismantle its own mythologies, thereby freeing young female hearts and minds from the curse of Prince Charming, so it’s no surprise that “Enchanted” trips up on its way to the finish. The windup disappoints, as does Susan Sarandon’s Queen Narissa, who enters in a bilious puff as if dressed for a fetish ball. The queen arrives blessedly late to a party that lasts a remarkably long time, in part because of the dunderheaded Prince Edward (an excellent James Marsden), a crafty fly in the ointment (the equally stellar Timothy Spall) and a computer-generated chipmunk called Pip (voiced by Mr. Lima and Jeff Bennett). I’d gladly tell you about Pip’s close call with crucifixion, but I don’t want to scare the children.
