Movie review: 'Enchanted' a royal treat

"Enchanted" is a pure comic confection, at once a spoof and a celebration of those Disney fantasies where a prince and princess fall in love over the course of a duet and bluebirds sew her wedding dress.

Beginning in a world of classic hand-drawn animation, we meet Princess Giselle and Prince Edward, who give us a full first act in about eight minutes -- character songs, story line, climax and all. Giselle is a sweet innocent who, like Snow White, befriends woodland creatures; shares Belle's taste in gowns, and has Ariel's flowing red hair. The heroic Prince rescues her from a monster and is smitten, but the wicked Queen hates Giselle and pushes her down a well to keep her away from her stepson.

The other end of the portal is a modern-day, live-action Times Square. Giselle (Amy Adams) pops through a sewer manhole in a hoop skirt and tiara, eyes agoggle with delight at this strange new land. In a flash she's gone from the realm of Happily Ever After to a befuddled refugee in Hard Knocksville. One downpour later she's as bedraggled as a bag lady, knocking on a billboard mockup of a castle door, pleading to be let back in.

Giselle is rescued by divorced divorce lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey), the single dad of a cute princess-starved daughter. (Dad steers his wee angel toward feminist role models like Marie Curie, even though she died of radiation poisoning.)

Father and daughter warm to Giselle, and Robert puts her up in their apartment until she can contact her family, to the consternation of his possessive girlfriend (Idina Menzel). Meanwhile, Edward (James Marsden) travels to New York to locate his lost love, with the Queen's buffoonish henchman (Timothy Spall) in hot pursuit.

Kevin Lima ("Tarzan,"102 Dalmatians") directs the live-action sequences with high spirits. His animation background taught him to think out gags visually: There's a thigh-slapper where Giselle runs up a hill in Central Park, arms outstretched, in an echo of the famous shots in "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Sound of Music."

The fish-out-of-water gimmick has been mined to exhaustion, but here it works. Adams, with her sunbeam optimism, has some wonderful slapstick tussles with her hoop skirt in cramped, claustrophobic Manhattan. And she has a great moment when, experiencing anger for the first time, she gets a sense of her own physicality and gives Robert a smolderingly sexy stare.

Playing the brave but vapid prince, Marsden (in his second musical of the year, after "Hairspray") is goofily un-self-conscious. The two keep the comic energy so lively that Dempsey's bemused reaction shots are punch lines in themselves.

Everywhere you look there are sly references to Disney's fairy-tale heritage, from Julie Andrews' narration to the happy working tune that Adams trills while a squad of pigeons, rats and cockroaches clean up Robert's apartment. The songs -- by the "Pocahontas"/"Hunchback" musical team of Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz -- have an insider's knowingness; they're corny but infectious at the same time. Like the film, they hit all the right notes.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186