Enchanted

In Enchanted, Disney is content with shoveling us the same old shit and calling it sugar.

I was hoping this would be a biting satire of the Mouse House’s past fables but instead they played it safe and only increased their self-awareness: “Yes we know how silly the musical numbers were in those old cartoons, so let’s ratchet up the camp level a little for this film!” Except for a bizarrely crude cleaning-song parody involving NYC’s vermin (amusing in concept and maybe initially but like all the movie’s good parts, the fun factor was quick and fleeting), I can’t think of anything that makes this different from all the other cookie-cutter sludge the company churns out every year.

Disney really made it seem like they were going to town on all the soggy cliches clogging up their extensive family-friendly output but it’s not like I was expecting this to star Sarah Silverman (though that would have been genius). Instead we get James Marsden beginning to belt an over-the-top “I’ve been dreaming of…” and then getting hit by a group of bicyclists in Central Park. That’s about it.

All the scenes with McDreamy were snooze-worthy and highlighted the main problem of Enchanted: its tone. The real world scenes weren’t crazy enough… in fact, they tried to act like this was reality and not, you know… a fucking DISNEY production. No police or post-9/11 military personel patrolling the city at all? Not a single person thinks about sending Amy Adams to a psychiatric ward (though that might have been too darkly comedic)? It’s either a total fantasy or not. You can’t try to have it both ways.

In the end it’s another dumbed-down kid flick. There are much worse injustices in this world and if you’re satisfied with that then by all means, bring the whole Sunday School class.