July 3, 2009

Enchanted (2007)
Remember how I said that Hollywood is good at poking fun at itself? Disney's even better. This movie is great in so many ways. It takes all of the saccharine-sweet things about Disney and parodies them and at the same time, pays a nice homage to all of the old classic Disney movies, including references to Dumbo, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. When it came out, I was ecstatic to see the return to hand-drawn animation (and am even more pumped about The Princess and the Frog later this year!!) and the translation of cartoon to actor and back again is pretty dead on. It's a little bit of a twisted fairy tale in that people don't end up with who they're necessarily set up to be with, but it's got a beautiful princess, a handsome prince, catchy songs, talking animals, and a fearsome villain, so really, that's all it needs. Poor Timothy Spall has seemed to be stuck in the villain roles, but he plays Wormtail so well in Harry Potter that it makes sense.
My Netflix rating: 4 stars