New Review! ENCHANTED (2007, dir. One Lucky Bastard)

Extremely enjoyable movie. About as harmless and girlishly satisfying as any of my guilty Ruffalo pleasures (13 Going on 30 or Just Like Heaven) but Enchanted has a wicked sense of humor to go with its sugarplum charm.

Yeah. I can't believe I wrote that sentence either. I'm tired and I've been eating too much to compensate for feelings of inferiority lately. But also Enchanted puts you in that kind of mood. Where you want to write goopy sentences and eat cranberry bliss bars from Starbucks and sing lead in the musical number that's going on in your head. You also want to find true love and then take him to see this movie and when the film opens with a supremely toe-tingling nod to the Disney films you grew up on you want true love to nuzzle your shoulder with his perfect nose and whisper "I love you for loving this." And then any feelings of inadequcy you've ever had will melt away and you can finally stop putting so much pressure on yourself to succeed and just get married and pregnant.

So... anyway... it's a great movie and what you're imagining in your head based on marketing campaigns and trailers and Amy Adams clips is exactly what the movie is only with better jokes and a reliably predictable ending. So if what you're thinking doesn't excite you I wouldn't go see it but if you're even slightly intrigued I would suggest you check it out.

Patrick Dempsey is really the only guy who could possibly play the male lead in this story without looking like a total and complete skeezeball. Yes. Amy Adams is phenomenally committed to a performance that could have been completely phoned in. She performed her own singing. Hollywood is paying attention because they LOVE congratulating people on achieving the achievable. But there is one moment where Dempsey pulls a quarter from Adams's ear and I died inside with love for her. She really was so endearing and likeable. I couldn't remember the last time I watched a mainstream Hollywood film with a lead actress who I didn't openly hate for being anorexic and an ice queen (YOU TOO REESE!) But my MVP title and "Hooray" go out to James Marsden. Adams may be plucky and charming but at least she got costume changes. MARSDEN WORE THE SAME TIGHTS FOR WEEKS! On top of that he makes an impossibly gentle transition from a caricature to self-aware caricature. A real trooper.

Bottom Line: Boys, take your ladies. You'll probably end up having a ball.