Disenchanted Review
Crushed under the weight of missed opportunities (Spoiler Warning!)
Disenchanted actually succeeds where most sequels fail: It answers the questions of “Why now? Why is this sequel being made now?” However, a sequel to Enchanted actually makes sense, as there are many different areas that you can still explore in Giselle and Robert’s relationship. The most obvious would be to explore the difference between a happily ever after to a real world marriage; and that’s what this film does (at least for a little while).
The story begins with a little bit of narration, which gets us up to speed with the story from the previous film (Enchanted), and informs us that Giselle and Robert’s child is now… a teenager! Not only that, but an inconsiderate, emotionless, addicted to her phone type of teenager. Needles to say, this does not jive well with the almost cartoonish (pun intended) personality of Giselle, her stepmother.
And any reasonable person would assume this clash of values (a happily ever after worldview versus a depressed teenager) is what will push the film forward; well you would be wrong. What happens is that Giselle makes a wish that life would become a fairy tail. So everyone turns into their fairy tail counterparts; Giselle becomes a horrid stepmother, and her stepdaughter has now switched her core values to match that of a stereotypical Disney princess. And there is now a completely new villain in town, an evil queen!
The swap in values from one part of the story to the other is handled in such a sloppy way that is feels almost as if the filmmakers lost interest in what they wrote before and decided to write about something completely new. Because the clear flaw and moral need of each character is introduced long after the story itself is in progress, the film lacks any clear emotional arc; and by the time we make it to the end, it’s as if we are watching an ending to a different story than what we started with.
Patrick Dempsey as Robert and Amy Adams as Giselle give the best performance in a bad film, though even the songs are let down by a pitiful script (even if the person singing makes it seem more delightful than it should be). If you are planning on watch Disenchanted, just watch the first film (Enchanted) instead.
