‘Pushes the nostalgia buttons’: why Enchanted is my feelgood movie

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Much is often made of Amy Adams’ “always the bridesmaid” Oscar record, as she’s yet to claim a win from six nominations. While this is egregious for an actor of her calibre, the bigger snub is that she wasn’t even nominated for her best performance yet. Enchanted’s Giselle introduced Adams to a mainstream audience and was possibly considered too frivolous for Academy tastes, but her pitch-perfect take on a real-life Disney princess is a masterclass in full-bore commitment, and the gravitational force around which this winningly charming Disney film revolves.

I was instantly won over by Enchanted on its 2007 release, but having since revisited it many times (including with my own kids), I’m convinced it’s close to a platonic ideal of family-friendly feelgood viewing, and there’s been nothing in this vein that’s come close to matching it since (including, sadly, 2022 Disney+ sequel Disenchanted). It’s also so much better than the Disney’s many official live-action remakes.

Much of its success is down to Adams’ performance, utterly without guile, as the fairytale princess who becomes a fish out of water in ’00s New York – “a place where there are no happily ever afters” – but the tone is just right from the off. Its throwback to the leatherbound-storybook framing device segues into a 2D-animated prologue introducing Giselle, who’s an amalgamation of Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty’s Aurora. Optimistic, friendly with woodland creatures, prone to spontaneously breaking into song and eagerly awaiting her true love’s kiss, Giselle is due to marry Prince Edward (James Marsden) before she’s shoved down a well that turns out to be a portal to Times Square.

There’s something cosy in the predictable framework the story follows, as Giselle gets to know divorce lawyer and single father Robert (Patrick Dempsey). Through culture-clash osmosis, she loses some of her naivety, but not without encouraging those around her to occasionally treat life a little more like a Disney movie, with casual declarations of love, an unwaveringly sunny outlook and frequent bursts of song. The upbeat centrepiece Central Park number That’s How You Know never fails to move me to tears. Adams’ delivery of an impromptu ode to wearing your heart on your sleeve is so wholly idealistic, something about the pure joy of it gets me every time.

It might not always have been this way. According to director Kevin Lima, the original spec script shopped by writer Bill Kelly and producer Sunil Perkash was a little too cynical. “I came in and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we make it a love letter to Disney?’” There’s certainly a great deal of warmth for Disney movies past: Enchanted is littered with in-jokes, references and cameos (including the voice artists behind Ariel, Belle and Pocahontas) that provide an extra dopamine hit for the target audience. But it gets its affectionate ribbing of the tropes spot-on, finding the humour without disparaging; the tidying-up sing along Happy Working Song parodies with genuine wit and a catchy tune. That’s why it’s aged so much better than the low-hanging-fruit snark of the Shrek movies.

Enchanted earns bonus feelgood points for neatly tying up the loose ends for all of its characters. Robert’s partner Nancy (future Elsa, Idina Menzel), who gets slightly short shrift for the most part, has a happily ever after send-off, and even the divorcing couple played by Tonya Pinkins and Isiah Whitlock Jr gets a beautiful little subplot in the scantest of screen time.

Every supporting role is well cast, from Susan Sarandon’s vampish sorceress to Timothy Spall’s minion. Marsden – who could’ve coasted on his cheekbones alone – is an absolute hoot as the pampered prince blissfully unaware of how at odds he is with his surroundings. He bags the funniest lines, telling Robert and his daughters, “Thank you for taking care of my bride, peasants.” But his straightforwardly romantic pronouncements (Nancy is taken aback when he introduces Giselle as “the love of my life, my heart’s true desire” without a hint of irony) also chime nicely with the film’s underlying sincerity, which is what makes it such a balm for the real world’s harshness.

Compared with the recent box-office trend of carbon-copy live-action remakes of beloved animated classics, which even at their best feel like hollow exercises, Enchanted pushes the nostalgia buttons and provides everything you could want from a Disney character in a real-world context, but it does it with wit, invention and a palpable affection for its source material. Talking about revisiting the film in preparation for Disenchanted, Adams recently said, “It was nice to have distance from it and to be able to see it for the absolute joy that it was.” That’s how you know you’ve made a generational comfort movie.