Review by Marty Mapes

Enchanted is good, even for adults. It has a clever premise uncheapened by cop-outs or contrivances. It is charming, funny, and refreshing. It manages to be bright-eyed, naive, and optimistic without being ironic or forced.

Enchanted opens in Andalasia which looks surprisingly like a 2-D Disney"Princess" cartoon. The heroine, Giselle (Amy Adams), sings a song where she pines for True Love's Kiss. With her perfect, idealistic voice she summons bluebirds, fawns, and chipmunks to help do her chores. The gimmick is introduced ten minutes later when the evil queen pushes our heroine into a magical well that comes out upside-down under a manhole in 3-dimensional, real-life New York City.

Perhaps the funniest scenes illustrate that Giselle really does have some magical power, even in our world. To clean Robert's apartment, she kicks off her working song, summoning all of the "woodland" creatures that are available in New York City, if you can picture that.

Enchanted caught me by surprise with its good heart, its self-referential game-playing, and its clever gimmick that allows, in our post-ironic era, big-production musical numbers in Central Park. Not bad for a "Princess" movie.

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