Movie Report: Enchanted

So. My Best Reader and I had been looking forward to watching Enchanted, which looked clever and fun. And it was clever and fun, and we both enjoyed it. But nobody wants to hear about that. You all want to hear me rant and complain, don’t you? Look what we’ve come to. We can’t just enjoy a perfectly good movie without becoming incensed, and then, to cap it all, we can’t just enjoy a perfectly good incensation, but have to spread it around Blogovia. Well, fine. I was incensed, OK?

Before the incensage, here’s the plot. OK, never mind the plot. It doesn’t matter. Devil Bunny needs a ham, and for reasons not entirely clear, thinks it will obtain one to take a Disney Heroine out of an animated movie and plunk her into the modern world. Go it? The climax of the movie is at the Kings and Queens Ball, where the modern folk dress up like storybook kings and queens, and it’s held at the top of some tall Manhattan building, because they quite rightly let the art director make the plot decisions at that point, and besides, Devil Bunny still needs that ham, and maybe the ham is at the top of the Empire State Building. Why else would those people be climbing up the outside of the building? Look, you’re not focusing on the incensedom. All you need to know is that there’s a Ball, and a Disney Princess type, unfamiliar with the real world, and—one more thing—the Guy Figure has a young daughter. Eight years old? Something like that. OK? Got it? Question? You, the one wearing a shirt. Yes? No, the Guy Figure has no distinguishing characteristics of any kind. That would ruin the movie. Can we get back to the incensement?

The Disney Princess (who I’ll call Giselle, because that’s the name they gave her in the movie, although, you know, not real important to becoming incensified) goes to the Precocious Girl and says I’m going to the Ball! However shall I prepare? and the Precocious Girl pulls out a fucking credit card, and there follows a montage of the two of them going shopping in fancy Manhattan salons, and getting her hair and nails and makeup done. And then, unsatisfied with this, there follows a tearful heart-to-heart between the Disney Princess (who I guess I’m not going to call Giselle, even though it’s her name, because it would ruin the rhythm of my ranting, unlike, for instance, a bunch of rambling parenthetical met remarks) and the Precocious Girl, where they reveal that neither has ever gone shopping with a mother, and yes, it really is the best thing in the world for a mother and a daughter to buy expensive luxuries on credit.

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. Neither am I making this up. I’m really not. It’s a very cute, sweet movie, and then wham! a paean to consumerism. And, may I just add, one which has no actual place or meaning in the story. I mean, there is supposed to be some sort of idea that when we get to the ball, all the real, modern folk are dressed as storybook characters, and that the storybook character is dressed like a real, modern woman. Only what she is actually wearing is an unflattering schmatte that, like all modern gowns, is obviously made with storybook princesses in mind, so it doesn’t work. But even if it did, it would work much better to simply have the Disney Princess arrive, unexpectedly, in modern drag, right?

But even if the plot necessitated such a scene, the correct thing to do would be to rewrite the plot so that it no longer necessitated such a scene, because the inclusion of such a scene is obscene and wrong. And I am calling it obscene and wrong without even knowing whether the stores portrayed in the movie as containing the Secret to Life’s Happiness are fictional or real, with Disney making back a large portion of the production cost from the product placement. I’m guessing the latter, but I neither shop in Manhattan nor do I watch much television, where (I’m told) shopping in Manhattan is a frequently depicted activity. Although not, generally, in children’s television. At least, that I’ve noticed.

And then, perplexingly, the Kings and Queens Ball was clearly planned to climax at midnight with the Kings and Queens Waltz, for which the attendees were instructed to find a partner other than the one they had come with. And if that sounds preposterous, I assume its preposterousness was designed to distract the viewer from noticing that the Kings and Queens Waltz was in four-four time. But it was a good movie, and all, other than that sort of thing. So that’s all right, Best Beloved. Do you see?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.