If the above accurately characterizes the thrust of 'Enchanted', rather than the thrust of one of its throwaway gags, then this movie is destined to bomb at the box office.But what the above bare-bones outline really doesn't do is reveal how sweet & smart this Barry Sonnenfeld production is. How cleverly it takes those fairy tale conventions that we've seen in Disney's "Snow White," "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" and then reuses them in new & clever ways.
Take -- for example -- what happens when Giselle decides to show her gratitude to Robert by cleaning up his filthy apartment. She starts out as every Disney princess does when she faces a situation like this. By bursting into song.
And -- of course -- Giselle's singing voice is so beautiful that it automatically lures all of these creatures out of the forest. And they immediately pitch in and start to help the princess clean up Robert's apartment.
But let's remember that this is New York, folks. And there are no forests nearby. Just a somewhat dingy inner city park. So who comes to Giselle's aid but rats, pigeons and roaches.
Still, this Disney Princess isn't bothered by the somewhat shabby assortment of creatures who come to help her. She's just grateful that they're there. So Giselle just keeps singing as this sea of roaches come swirling up out of the drain and then remove all of the soap scum from the tub. And as a dozen or more rats jump into the kitchen sink and begin scrubbing the dirty dishes.
And throughout this effects-laden sequence, Giselle dances around the apartment singing "The Happy Working Song." Which is one of the five new tunes that Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz have written for "Enchanted." Though "The Happy Working Song" may eventually receive special recognition from musical theater fans. Given that it's the very first uptempo number (To my knowledge, anyway) that rhymes "determine" with "vermin."
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I predict this not because this concept isn't funny on paper (it is), but rather that this is not the kind of story that people will want to pay $8 a pop to see in a theater, and least of all one made by Disney.
Rather, people pay $8 a pop to immerse themselves in a story that affirms their own positive values.
Stated simply, every brick in the Magic Kingdom and every frame of every feature made during the Walt era was assembled with a strong understanding between Disney and its audience of the importance of story and the place that stories hold as the building blocks that give our lives meaning, identity, and purpose.
(The canon of Disney's films forms a coherent, consistent story-world through which certain larger themes emerge that reflect the values of the man (and the staff he assembled) as he understood them through the lens of a patriotic American and non-denominational Christian.)
That is the difference one feels when watching a Disney film vs. a Dreamworks film or when walking in the Magic Kingdom vs. Busch Gardens or one of the Paramount parks. Disney fills its audience with the sense that the whole picture has a larger meaning driving the show, and the audience is invited to experience it, make it a part of themselves, and allow that story-world to guide our lives in the "real world".
Hence, when one watches a Disney movie about a princess in rags who is oppressed by a murderous queen or her wicked stepmother but is vindicated through good divine and regal forces, the audience understands that this story is a projection of themselves in the present backward into the world of story as a message about the role of ourselves in the struggles between good and evil.
However, due to fears about the potential "political incorrectness" of the Disney story world, as well as a lack of conviction in the whole enterprise of telling any kind of story at all, the corporate executives at Disney are perpetually tempted to follow the safer route and reduce the Disney stories to a sequence of bare elements that can be marketed.
(Hence, in the context of the "Disney Princesses" line of products, Cinderella is no longer the timeless embodiment of oppressed good at the hands of powerful forces of evil, but she's nothing more than one pretty girl in a blue dress among a host of other pretty girls in pretty dresses, Disney or otherwise.)
It is in this context that we get the (apparent) basic message of 'Enchanted':
a) The Disney story world is not the world of timeless values in narrative form through which our lives are lived with meaning, but rather an actual, physical parallel universe that is separated from our rat-infested, gritty urban existence by a great divide.
b) If one could bring characters from the story world universe to our universe and put them in real situations, we would see what lovable but ridiculous buffoons the characters really are (and not particularly worthy of the attention of serious-minded people).
c) Hence, the only use that people living in "the real world" may have for princes and princesses is that, through their attractiveness, we might be able to "make the rats and roaches dance" every once and a while, but beyond that, we are better off accepting the primacy of our grimy, jaded "reality" and not imagine that it carries any sort of moral authority.
There is certainly nothing wrong with telling this kind of story about the silliness of storybook values and characters, (versus those geniusus who don't fool with cartoons), and I'm sure lots of people are jaded and grizzled enough to have that kind of attitude to where this movie will appeal to them.
However, those kinds of movies are not the ones that do well at the box office. If Disney wants to capitalize on its legacy, the path better taken is not cowardly self-parody (and the fast bucks that come with it), but having the vision and character to put together a solid story that touches the hearts of its audience and challenges them to believe that our world is guided by a higher ethic and higher meaning to it all.
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