Sing, sweet nightingale

Last night, I meant to go to bed early for once, but I accidentally stayed up to watch Enchanted, which, on the whole, I found entirely charming. Amy Adams is adorable. I had no idea. Also, there were a lot of references to classic animated Disney movies, beyond the obvious Snow White/Cinderella/ Sleeping Beauty stuff. For example, McDoofus and Giselle have dinner at an Italian place called Bella Notte, like the song from “Lady and the Tramp.” Also, there’s a part in one of the musical numbers where McDoofus and Giselle are in a rowboat in the pond in Central Park for no real reason other than it recalls the “Kiss the Girl” scene from The Little Mermaid. So as a Disney geek and appreciater of adorable ladies, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But as a feminist, I still had some serious issues with it.

For one, Susan Sarandon’s evil queen is obviously the coolest, most powerful character—I mean look at this:
She’s the evil queen from Snow White plus Maleficent, and she’s the greatest, but the plot is put into motion because her stepson finds his true love (allegedly), and her throne becomes threatened, so she heaves Giselle out of the world. So here we have a power mad woman upsetting the balance of things, and only a bone-headed man can restore everything. And James Marsden, while brilliantly moronic, is so. Dumb. He interprets poor Pip’s charades as messages to tell him how great he is—only becoming able to understand him at the very end, of course. But the thing that really killed it for me was at the end, when he basically catches Narissa trying to kill Giselle, and she tries to save her ass, suggesting perhaps he’s overreacting and being a bit “melodramatic,” and he replies, “I don’t know what that means.” I was like, “Really? REALLY? This idiot gets to take the place of this smart, powerful woman??” Why are smart, powerful women always evil in Disney films? Why? At least, in this instance, have another smart, powerful woman restore the balance. But Giselle is a bimbo and a half, and Nancy is hardly developed as a character, so we’re right where we were, like, eighty years ago with Snow White.

Another thing that really bothered me I guess is relatively minor, but here we go. When McDoofus tells his daughter that he’s going to ask Nancy to marry him, he tries to soften the blow by giving her a book—a book about important women in history, which, like, yay for you, McDoofus! But it is not favorably received by six-year-old Morgan, who would clearly rather read about princesses and enchantments and all that bananas. And maybe textbook-like material is not the greatest gift for a six-year-old, but I still think that book would be good for her. I mean, in this movie, you basically have the real world vs. fairy tale world, and obviously the children in the audience are going to be rooting for the world of make believe and hoping and hoping that McDoofus comes around and realizes Giselle is his one true love or whatever. So the book about important historical women gets shunted onto the “bad” side of this dichotomy, because it’s about McDoofus being boring and trying to take all the fun out of life or whatever. And it seems to show young girls that history isn’t important—that they can ignore all that, all the hard and brave and important things women have done, and go on hoping that some day their princes will come. The only thing that gave me hope here was a brief shot of Giselle reading the book on the couch before getting into it with McDoofus. Maybe Giselle can actually blend real life and fantasy for McDoofus and Morgan, making their lives more fun, but she can also help Morgan learn the important things about life. Wishful thinking since Enchanted is still a regular fairy tale. At least Giselle has her own job at the end! Hey, that’s progress, I guess.

So they, um, made a half-hearted attempt to do a more feminist retelling of a fairy tale, because Giselle has to go save McDoofus from the dragon instead of the other way around—she even uses a sword—but it is actually ultimately Pip the chipmunk who causes the dragon’s death. Which is fine, since I don’t like killing things. And the prince was rescued by the girl and her chipmunk.

It’s not enough. She still fell into an enchanted sleep that he had to wake her from!

Also, while McDoofus and Giselle have a slightly more realistic relationship, as they get to know each other a little bit (at least) before shacking up, we still have the same damned stale old fairy tale happening with Edward and Nancy. Like, okay, Giselle leaves behind a transparent shoe when she chases after the dragon to save her man, and at the end, Nancy finds it, and Edward puts it on her, and it fits, and they’re in love! They rush back to the fantasy land of Andalasia to get married. Ridiculous. It seemed that the point of this movie was to temper that archetype with at least a small strain of reality, but they totally negated that with the stupid ending. Damn, Disney, have some balls and allow some characters to be alone at the end of your movie. Oh, god, of course that’s never going to happen.

Hah, would you believe I actually really liked this movie? Because I did. I mean, I love The Little Mermaid, but it has some of the exact same problems. Oh, but there was this one stupid scene that almost made me cry, and it was mostly insignificant, but whatever. Peter Pettigrew follows Giselle and Edward to New York to try to thwart their reunion, and Pip the chipmunk figures it out, so Peter Pettigrew has to spend the rest of the movie trying to shut Pip up, and at one point, he strings Pip up by his paws using a hotel hanger, one of those with the clips for hanging up pants—each paw is stuck in a clip—so he’s just hanging there, looking kind of like he’s being crucified, and he makes a pitiful tiny animal squeak of pain, and it killed me. I mean, he escapes and everything, but that image just made me depressed. Do not cause pain and suffering to tiny animals!

Oh, also, like any good fairy tale, it has a narrator, and I was, like, “That betch sounds like Julie Andrews.” And it was! Even Julie Andrews in a tiny voiceover part can make a movie for me.