Never mind the sourpusses in the cynicism epicenter of the universe, Enchanted's princess looks for happy-ever-after and attracts a metropolis' worth of converts to her cause.
Rapturously played by Amy Adams, Giselle will likely win over everyone from America to Andalasia.
In the kitchen, acidic liquids dissolve sugar. With Giselle, it is the opposite. Her sweetness, never cloying, dissolves acidic personalities. Like that of Robert (Patrick Dempsey), the grouchy lawyer who takes in the homeless princess because his daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey), begs him to.
Morgan is smitten with Giselle, who explains that just before she was to wed to The Prince (James Marsden), she fell out of Andalasia and into New York. Giselle was, in fact, cursed by the Prince's Evil Stepmother (Susan Sarandon, underutilized and overplaying).
Waltzing between animated and live-action realms, Enchanted likewise waltzes between Grinches and Glindas, bringing together both personality types on its polished ballroom floor.
The concept is swell, the execution smile-making. But the movie, an iridescent bubble that ascends, impervious to punctures by wrought-iron fences or prickly people, soars with the helium-lightness of Adams' performance.
Familiar as Will Ferrell's salvation in Talladega Nights and Oscar-nominated supporting actress for Junebug, Adams here looks subversive because she plays it straight.
A composite of every full-skirted, animal-loving, housecleaning Disney cartoon princess, Giselle keeps a civil tongue in her head. It's the movie, directed by Kevin Lima, that has its tongue in cheek.
In Manhattan, Giselle has no woodland creatures to help her tidy Robert's grimy pad. So she summons pigeons and rats and roaches while singing a "Happy Working Song" that is the film's highlight.
