When Hollywood gets it right – they really get it right.
Does anybody in Hollywood “get” that?
After two weeks in theaters, the Disney feature “Enchanted” is still enchanting theater goers and crushing the competition.
Here’s why: it’s a delightful, thoroughly pro-family film. Throw in a little sexual innocence, mix with some pro-femininity and anti-divorce messages – and lots of great humor and acting – and you have great family fare.
Hollywood – pay attention to what people want. A film the whole family can enjoy.
Though, be aware that in one scene, the delightful Amy Adams (“Giselle”) in bath towel, innocently falls onto Patrick Dempsey whose girlfriend, Nancy, walks in at that moment. Giselle is concerned that Nancy thinks she and Dempsey have “kissed.” I loved it. Meanwhile, Nancy makes it clear that because of Dempsey’s daughter, she has never spent the night in his apartment. Way to go.
That’s as racy as it gets, and here’s how we get to that racy scene in the first place: Innocent Giselle is happily living in the cartoon land of Andalasia as a fairy tale maid about to marry her Prince. The Prince’s evil stepmother (played beautifully by Susan Sarandon, no editorial comment on that one) decides she’ll have none of it. She pushes Giselle into a magic fountain and to a place where there is no “happily ever after” – New York City.
There, Giselle meets the cynical but lovable Patrick Dempsey, Robert, and his six-year-old daughter. (His was no “amicable” divorce – mom left years ago.) Robert is, well, a divorce attorney trying to build into his daughter knowledge of “strong women” like Marie Curie, no dwelling on the fairy tale ones.
Giselle changes all that, and gives the little girl all sorts of fairy tales to really believe in. Meanwhile, her reaction to Robert’s profession – that his clients are separated “forever and ever” – is truly priceless.
She makes divorce sound as absurd as divorce really is.
And guess what? Robert’s girlfriend Nancy, whom he has long admired for being so “strong” and “realistic” has quite the romantic side to her after all. After she comes to see that Robert is trying to help Giselle, it seems she appreciates Robert’s new found romantic side more than one would have guessed.
The subtle message? Little girls, and grown-up girls too, love the idea of fairy princesses and prince charming.
And, I would add, no amount of feminist reengineering can change that!
As all this has been happening Giselle’s Prince Edward, his valiant (only not so valiant) aid, along with his evil step-mother and a delightful chipmunk have all left carton land to search for the princess in New York City, albeit with different intentions for what they will do when they find her, and hilarity follows.
So does true love, and a “happily-ever-after” message.
Of course “Enchanted,” which adults and children can all enjoy, is trouncing the competition. It’s a fun, conservative, innocent, pro-family, even subtly anti-divorce and anti-feminist film. (Compare the box office bucks this film is receiving with something like the recent box office bust of the anti-war “Lions for Lambs.” Even with it’s star studded cast – Robert Redford, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep – it was a huge commercial flop.)
Whether or not Hollywood likes it, it’s clear it’s in Hollywood’s interest to give families more happy endings like “Enchanted.” Now, let’s see what the powers-that-be in Movie Land do with that reality.
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Betsy Hart, a nationally syndicated columnist, also writes a column exclusively for The Chicago Daily Observer where she serves on its editorial board.