REVIEW: Enchanted

Saw Enchanted opening weekend at the Highland Theater at Figueroa and Avenue 56th Street in Highland Park. The other half wanted to check out the very close cheap theaters and we love Susan Sarandon so I tagged along.

The trailers for Enchanted were frankly horrific so I went into the theater with pretty low expectations. In fact, we had had no intention to see the movie at all until it started getting glowing reviews at the New York Times (Manohla Dargis), Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) and positive user feedback at rottentomatoes.com.


Since then Enchanted has gone on to become a legitimate hit for Disney, grossing upwards of $91 million dollars domestically, sure to surpass the magic $100 million threshold by the end of the year.


The movie stars Amy Adams, Oscar nominee for Best Actress in Junebug two years ago, the very handsome James Marsden (Hairspray) as her prince and Grey's Anatomy's McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey as the other contender for her heart.

The story is cute; not as shmaltzy as one would think. The other half liked it more than I did.

I liked it more than Dana Stevens ("There's something rotten about Enchanted") at Slate.com did, however!

The last act is atrocious, built around Susan Sarandon's evil mother-in-law morphing into an evil, fire-breathing dragon. However, the overall message (filtered through Disney's aggressive cross-promotional efforts of buy, buy, buy!) that people should follow their heart even if that doesn't lead to a fairy tale ending is a surprising one. Yeah, I was pretty surprised when the dragon kills the Princess at the end.

GRADE: B.