Dis­en­chant­ed

Once upon a time, there was a beau­ti­ful land called Andala­sia, a less beau­ti­ful land called New York City, and a hap­pi­ly ever after that nev­er need­ed a sequel. Isn’t that the point? It ends, and these peo­ple move on in pri­vate with­out us both­er­ing them. In real fairy­tales per­haps, but this is a sort-of fairy­tale engi­neered by the very con­tem­po­rary and very pro-recy­cling House of Mouse, after all.

So it’s a pret­ty sweet sur­prise that, against all odds, Dis­en­chant­ed, the baf­fling sequel to 2007’s Enchant­ed, whose sto­ry is set 15 years lat­er and has been 10 years in the mak­ing, just about finds rea­son to exist. Amy Adams’ ship­wrecked princess Giselle con­vinces her fam­i­ly – Grey’s Anatomy’s Patrick Dempsey (who’s bare­ly act­ed for the last decade) as her hus­band Robert, and his now-teenage daugh­ter Mor­gan (Gabriel­la Bal­dacchi­no) as well as their new baby Sophia – to relo­cate to the sleepy and def­i­nite­ly fake sub­ur­ban town of Mon­roeville to find a qui­et life. Anoth­er hap­pi­ly ever after.

Any­body who lives in the real world knows that giv­ing your­self a longer com­mute and a small­er town will almost make every­thing in life hard­er, but, well, Giselle is Giselle. Dis­sat­is­fied with her dis­sat­is­fied step­daugh­ter and a less-than-per­fect fix­er upper, she finds some mag­ic to hope­ful­ly, mirac­u­lous­ly fix all her woes.

Adam Shankman’s Dis­en­chant­ed just about works in its cau­tious decon­struc­tion of the fairy­tale nar­ra­tive, riff­ing on Cin­derel­la and the con­ven­tions of good ver­sus evil when it comes to moth­er­hood and female eman­ci­pa­tion. That is until it just becomes more fun to allow Amy Adams go all-out musi­cal the­atre vil­lain and things get a bit silly.

Maya Rudolph leans into her out­landish comedic tal­ent (and her ebul­lient voice work on ani­mat­ed series Big Mouth) as she and Adams face off as out­landish evil queens fight­ing for noth­ing oth­er than to be the most evil and the most queen. Idi­na Men­zel, too, is final­ly giv­en the pow­er bal­lad her career should demand in every sin­gle role. Although the peer­less Alan Menken also scored Enchant­ed, the sequel shares more in com­mon with out-and-out film musi­cals such as Mam­ma Mia! or The Great­est Show­man than the first film, which favoured a hand­ful of songs but a more wry sense of humour in Dempsey’s hag­gard New Yorker.

This sequel is much more about going big­ger and deep­er than fur­ther­ing the sto­ry. It’s more musi­cal, more out­landish, dark­er in places and more emo­tion­al too, as the dynam­ic between Giselle and Mor­gan is unex­pect­ed in a fairy­tale world that, until now, was defined by its het­ero­nor­ma­tive rela­tion­ships as an end goal. It’s more of a sound­track album of a movie, a sequel cry­ing out for a stage pro­duc­tion to give lit­tle girls and lethar­gic par­ents a rare night off: some­thing to sing about.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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