Micah Tillman

While we’re on lighter things, today, I wanted to say the following:

Enchanted is a wonderful movie. It just came out on DVD last week.

Forgive me for waxing philosophical about it, but the following should be noted:

(1) How the writer, Bill Kelly, dealt with the relation between (a) Disney’s traditional rendering of the world of fairytales and the (b) real world. Not “a long time ago, in a land far, far away” afterall.

(2) How they spoof the airiness and too-perfectness of the Disney Fairytale, while being simultaneously reverent. The way Kelly worked out the relation between the two “worlds” allows them to be both hilarious and serious at the same time. Fascinating.

(3) The songs are classic. This is real Disney Musical quality songwriting. Good job Menken and Schwartz! Here’s another element in the movie where the two-worlds issue is dealt with fascinatingly. Notice when/where/why the singing does and doesn’t “work,” especially when it comes to duets. Notice how duets can happen in this world, even though they don’t usually.

(4) The character development of Amy Adams‘ Giselle. She has to transition from being a Disney cartoon character into being a this-world character. The overlap in the middle, when the change is occurring (in other words, most of the movie) is very interesting (he said, being a philosophy nerd). Good job both to Adams and Kelly!

(5) Rachel Covey’s Morgan. Hers is the character that makes the connection of the two worlds possible (the interplay with the Giselle character here is . . . again . . . on this point . . . . philosophically . . . fascinating. I feel so defensive.). She not only finds (in Giselle) what she believes in/dreams about, but what she needs.

(6) I liked James Marsden’s character so much more in this movie than in X-Men. He plays a pretty-boy in both, but it’s not annoying here. Again, the two-worlds thing makes this possible.

(7) It’s amazing how many “adult themes” Kelly gets away with in this script, without it ever seeming that he’s getting away with anything. Patrick Dempsey’s Robert is a divorce attorney. He gets into an argument with his fiancee (Nancy, played by Wicked’s Idina Menzel) about Giselle spending the night with him and Morgan (including some awkwardness involving a bath towel and falling). Morgan gives advice to Giselle about boys only being “after one thing” — but neither she nor Giselle know what that one thing is. Roaches play a key role during one song-scene (one of whom gets brutally eaten by a pigeon).

Again, none of this comes across as inappropriate, in large part because of the two-worlds theme. There’s an awkwardness already there, on purpose. How are the idyllic cartoon world and the sad real world going to work together? Things are already “out of joint,” and so you expect there to be things that are “out of place.”

Makes one want to start talking postmodern, and say things like “transgressing the margins of Differance leaves traces which open the circle of the same to the in-vention of the Other.”

Okay. Enough of my strange philosophical analysis of Disney movies.

Tags: Alan Menken, Amy Adams, Bill Kelly, Disney, Enchanted, Idina Menzel, James Marsden, Patrick Dempsey, postmodernism, Rachel Covey, Stephen Schwartz, Wicked, X-Men