Disney’s belated, streaming sequel to its delightful 2007 hit Enchanted begins with its core couple – Amy Adams is still Giselle; Patrick Dempsey is still Robert – living not quite happily ever after in Manhattan. Cramped for space, they decide to move to a satellite town a train ride from the buzz and clamour of the big city. Inevitably, Morgan, Giselle’s teenage stepdaughter, is depressed to be stuck in this pretty dormitory. You know the sort of place, all neat lawns and gossip over the boxed hedges.
Disenchanted was filmed largely in Enniskerry.
Oh relax, Wicklow. We’re joking. If you can’t laugh at that then you certainly won’t be cracking a smile at the gags in this exhausting effort to get long-dissipated magic back into an elaborately decorated bottle.
Disenchanted is, to be fair, nowhere near as dire as the Disney+ streaming service’s recent Hocus Pocus 2. It helps that they’re following up a good film rather than a terrible one. No sane person will place the songs among Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz’s best, but, if we must have middle-ranking belters then best commission Disney’s A-list to write the things.
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For all that, Disenchanted feels muddled, half-cocked and dragged down by its need to constantly talk us through its indifferent high concept.
You will recall that the original worked as both a celebration and a pastiche of Disney’s own sunny animated fantasies. Adams played a fairy princess – friend to singing animals – who gets transported to New York of the early millennial years and, after various adventures, ends up married to Dempsey’s initially sour divorce lawyer.
The challenge in such sequels is to break down the previous film’s closing order and reignite the conflicts. There is something about a wishing well. There is something about a magic wand. Eventually, Enniskerry is transformed into a heightening of the archetypal fairy-tale kingdom. (That’s to say it looks like Walt Disney World.) The local meanie (Maya Rudolph, always welcome) becomes an evil queen. The obsequious bloke in the coffee shop becomes her “mirror on the wall”. And so forth.
What we really needed was something in the vein of the second Scream film – a sequel that, rather than just deconstructing classic Disney tropes, satirised emerging conventions of the streaming sequel
What we really needed was something in the vein of the second Scream film – a sequel that, rather than just deconstructing classic Disney tropes, satirised emerging conventions of the streaming sequel. You might cynically remark that we have accidentally ended up with just that. Far too much of this overlong entertainment is taken up with meditations on which elements of lore are being explored in the town’s reimagining.
The most intriguing subplot has Giselle fighting transformation into an evil stepmother, but Adams doesn’t get nearly enough worthwhile material. She knows how to straighten her shoulders like an ugly sister. She knows how to tighten her vowels. Yet toxicity never satisfactorily sours her inherent niceness.
It does not come as an enormous surprise to learn that, following rumoured “mixed reactions” to a test screening, reshoots took place in Buckinghamshire (boo!) earlier this year. Though not a total disaster, Disenchanted feels hobbled by compromise. Perhaps too much time has passed. The first film’s clever deconstructions have been echoed to oblivion on TV series such as Schmigadoon! and Disenchantment. When has such a long-delayed sequel lived up to the original? Okay, stop shouting “Top Gun” at me. It’s still hard. It’s hard. An honourable effort, but the magic has gone.
Disenchanted is streaming on Disney+ from today
