Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Enchanted Stuck in the Middle

We saw Enchanted yesterday (our only family Christmas Day tradition). This is the new movie from Disney that pokes fun at Disney. It starts out in a comically stereotypical Disney fairytale cartoon and then moves into the real world, New York city, where the characters remain in character but interact with other people. All this makes for some very funny scenes and one deep moment whereupon the lack of emotional range of cartoon characters are explored but beyond that is nothing special.

This movie is 'stuck in the middle' in that it tries to appeal to two audiences and falls short. For children, the irony is lost on them and the movie becomes boring. To placate them, Disney adds a gratuitous dragon at the end that is pretty much completely pointless. For adults, the irony is there but it is muted because the writers cannot steer too far away from kid friendly issues. And so while the girl ends up with a different guy, everyone still lives very happily ever after; in the barf worthy sense.

That said, you could do worse for a school holiday movie.