Where's Princess Coo-Coo When You Need Her?

Enchanted - dir. Kevin Lima - 2007 - USA

It seemed a bit too easy to give Disney accolades for having the ability to make fun of themselves with Enchanted. As we all know, outside of Pixar, Disney has been throwing its audience garbage for years, and it seemed about time for a little inspiration. With Enchanted, they presented us with something with a faint suggestion of idea: an animated fairy tale princess gets banished to "real life." However, as should have been expected, Enchanted is too proud of its own clever proposition to really work, outside of Amy Adams' inspired performance as Giselle, the hopeless romantic princess in search of her prince. The first issue that should be taken up with Enchanted is that it's too shallow to really work as a satire or even an advanced spoof. Giselle isn't so much another Disney princess as she is an emalgomation of princesses we've already met. She's Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and a bunch of other bitches all in one, and if it weren't for Adams, she'd probably be tedious to watch. She's got an entourage of cute animals at her side, most notably a smart-ass chipmunk who follows the prince (James Marsden) into the real world to save her. Had Disney actually been sophisticated with the production, they would have made fun of their own cheap marketing in throwing in this inexcusably cutesy "animal friend," the Jar-Jar Binks, Elmo bullshit we all know too well. When all of Enchanted's shallow ambition wears off, you come to a horrible realization that there's about an hour left of the film, all of which surrounds Giselle's relationship with a "wooden" single dad (Patrick Dempsey, though they could have cast anyone). All this adds up to a big disappointment and I haven't even gotten to the horrendousness that is Susan Sarandon. We all enjoy a good "give your Oscar back, Cuba Gooding Jr." joke, but why not apply that to Ms. Sarandon, who's made a post-Oscar career out of playing useless mothers in lousy films (Mr. Woodcock and In the Valley of Elah were her most recent duds)? Susan, go polish the Oscar and bitch about George W. Bush with your husband so I don't have to see you any more. Just thank God for Amy Adams.