‘Disenchanted’ Evaluation: Amy Adams in a Scattershot ‘Enchanted’ Sequel

“Enchanted,” the 2007 Disney musical comedy wherein Amy Adams performed a goody-two-shoes princess who’s exiled from her fairy-tale animated kingdom and transported to the live-action world of New York Metropolis, was one of many final actually good fish-out-of-water comedies — a style that kicked into gear within the ’80s with motion pictures like “Splash” and “Again to the Future” and “‘Crocodile’ Dundee,” however that finally wore out its welcome. The fantastic thing about “Enchanted” is that it was a Disney children’ film that turned every thing folks love about Disney children’ motion pictures right into a luscious joke. Adams’ Giselle, who had cartoon birds flying round her and saved breaking into music, was too healthful to be true, but that was her enchantment, her barely ridiculous pleasure. The film, in its very type, found out a approach to have its G-rated princess cake and eat it too.

The movie made a sort of noble final stand for the entire thought of squeaky-clean girlish goodness. However it wasn’t till I noticed “Disenchanted,” the sequel to “Enchanted” that’s popping out (solely on Disney+) 15 years later, that I noticed simply how far out of style this type of factor has now fallen. What’s in style is regal nose-in-the-air imperiousness — the type of operatic not-niceness that was changing into newly standard across the time of “Maleficent” (2014). And “Disenchanted,” leaving benevolence totally on the shelf, provides you a heaping double dose of it.

The film is about within the New York suburban city of Monroeville, the place Giselle and her earthly Prince Charming, Robert (Patrick Dempsey), together with their child lady and the teenage Morgan (Gabriella Baldacchino) — Robert’s daughter from a earlier marriage — have relocated with the intention to recapture their fortunately ever after (as so many urban-to-suburban transplants have tried to do). They purchase a fixer-upper that appears like a small citadel, however inside days they’re struggling the suburban doldrums. So Giselle, seizing on the Wand of Needs that’s been gifted to Morgan by the visiting King and Queen of Andalasia (James Marsden and Idina Menzel, gamely reviving their roles), makes use of the wand to show all of Monroeville right into a fairy-tale kingdom: the medieval suburban village of Monrolasia, all bursting fauna and dancing townsfolk. In doing this, she winds up placing a hex on herself. She is now that archetype of overgrown mean-girl angle…the depraved stepmother!

However there’s one other overgrown imply lady on the town: the control-freak socialite Malvina (Maya Rudolph), who will get became an evil queen. Giselle, even in her reworked state, isn’t simply imply. For some time, Adams performs her hovering between identities, so that each time Giselle drops a quip with an edge (often one thing alongside the traces of “I’m not useless — I simply look good in every thing!”), she seems shocked on the line that simply popped out of her mouth, one thing Adams performs with delectable shock. However then the imply half begins to take over, and Giselle and Malvina go at one another as if competing to be the native Cruella de Vil.

One has to ask: How a lot enjoyable is there in that? The fish-out-of-water hook is gone, as is Giselle’s id as a very good specimen of a vanquished world. Apparent in its comedy, without delay overblown and undernourished in its fantasy, “Disenchanted,” at occasions, is sort of a kiddified “Don’t Fear Darling” crossed with “Cinderella Strikes Again.” At others, it’s a light-weight present in quest of a film. The visible results are all swirling sparkles and sprouting vines, however the actual downside is that the movie has a pandering impersonality, together with the busy skewed logic of a metaverse. The songs, by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, are unmemorable — extra generic Broadway than sparkly pop. And although Adams, in an electrical blue gown with a peacock collar, acts duly liberated because the “unhealthy” Giselle, it’s arduous to know what we’re rooting for. Maya Rudolph retains giving drop-dead seems of what-the-heck snob incredulity, which she’s nice at, however you would like that she had extra to do. By the point Idina Menzel belts out a ballad referred to as “Love Energy,” we notice that we couldn’t be extra in awe of her pipes and couldn’t be much less invested within the goofy scattershot story of “Disenchanted.”