Psycho's Movie Reviews #34: Enchanted (2007)

Enchanted is a 2007 American live-action/animated musical fantasy romantic comedy film, produced by Walt Disney Pictures, Sonnenfeld Productions, and Josephson Entertainment. Written by Bill Kelly and directed by Kevin Lima, the film stars Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Timothy Spall, Idina Menzel, Rachel Covey, and Susan Sarandon. The film is live action/animated and its plot focuses on an archetypal Disney Princess, who is forced from her traditional animated world into the live-action world of New York City.

The film is both a homage to, and a self-parody of, Disney's animated features, making numerous references to Disney's past works through the combination of live-action filmmaking, traditional animation, and computer-generated imagery. It marks the return of traditional animation to a Disney feature film after the company's decision to move entirely to computer animation in 2004. Composer Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who had written songs for previous Disney films, wrote and produced the songs of Enchanted, with Menken also composing its score. The animated sequences were produced at James Baxter Animation in Pasadena. Filming of the live-action segments took place around New York City.

Enchanted premiered on October 20, 2007, at the London Film Festival before its wide release on November 21, 2007, in the United States. Enchanted was critically well-received, established Adams as a leading lady, and earned more than $340 million worldwide at the box office. It won three Saturn Awards, Best Fantasy Film, Best Actress for Adams and Best Music for Menken. Enchanted also received two nominations at the 65th Golden Globe Awards and three Best Original Song nominations at the 80th Academy Awards. A sequel, titled Disenchanted, is in development and is expected to premiere on Disney+.

Plot:

In the animated fairy tale kingdom of Andalasia, Narissa, the mean and ruthless queen and an evil sorceress, schemes to protect her claim to the throne, which she will lose once her stepson, Prince Edward, finds his true love and marries. She enlists her loyal servant Nathaniel to keep Edward distracted by hunting trolls. Giselle, a young woman, dreams of meeting a prince and experiencing a "happily ever after". She, her chipmunk friend Pip, and animals from the forest work together to make a homemade statue of her true love she saw in a dream. Edward hears Giselle singing and sets off to find her. Nathaniel frees a captured troll to get rid of Giselle, but Edward rescues her. She and Edward are instantly attracted to each other and plan to be married the following day.

Disguised as an old hag, Narissa intercepts Giselle on her way to the wedding and pushes her into a well, where Giselle is transformed into a live-action version of herself and transported to New York's Times Square Manhattan in the real world. Giselle, frightened and confused, quickly becomes lost and homeless. Meanwhile, Robert, a widowed divorce lawyer, prepares to propose to his girlfriend Nancy. Robert and his young daughter Morgan encounter Giselle on their way home, and Robert begrudgingly allows Giselle to stay the night in their apartment at the insistence of Morgan, who believes Giselle is a princess.

Pip and Edward embark on a rescue mission to the real world, where they too are turned into live-action versions of themselves. Pip, now a real chipmunk, no longer has the ability to speak, and only communicates through squeaks. Narissa sends Nathaniel to follow and impede Edward. Narissa appears to Nathaniel and gives him three poisoned apples that will put whoever eats one to sleep until the clock strikes twelve, after which they will die. Meanwhile, after Giselle summons insects and vermin to clean Robert's apartment, Nancy arrives to take Morgan to school. She meets Giselle and leaves, assuming Robert was unfaithful. Robert is initially upset but spends the day with Giselle, knowing she is vulnerable in the city. Giselle questions Robert about his relationship with Nancy and helps the pair reconcile by sending Nancy flowers and an invitation to a costume ball at the Woolworth Building.

Edward locates Giselle at Robert's apartment. While Edward is eager to take Giselle home to Andalasia and marry her, she suggests that they should first go on a date and get to know each other better. Giselle promises to return to Andalasia after the ball that night, which Robert and Nancy also attend. Narissa decides to come to the real world and kill Giselle herself after Nathaniel fails twice to poison her. At the ball, Robert and Giselle dance romantically with each other. Giselle and Edward then prepare to depart, but Giselle feels depressed at leaving Robert behind. Narissa appears as the old hag and offers the last poisoned apple to Giselle, promising that it will erase her sorrowful memories. Giselle takes a bite, falls unconscious, and is plunged into a sleep with mere minutes to live.

Narissa attempts to escape with Giselle's body but is confronted by Edward. Nathaniel, seeing that Narissa never cared about him, reveals her plot. Robert realizes that true love's kiss is the only force powerful enough to break the apple's spell. Edward's kiss fails to wake Giselle, and so he and Nancy prompt Robert to kiss her instead. When Robert kisses her, she awakens. Infuriated, Narissa transforms into a dragon and takes Robert hostage. Giselle takes Edward's sword and pursues Narissa to the top of the building as the dragon intends to drop Robert to his death. Pip comes to support Giselle and helps defeat Narissa by causing Narissa to fall to the streets below, and explode into glitter. Robert almost falls as well, but Giselle manages to catch him, and they share another kiss.

A happy new life unfolds for everyone, showing Edward and Nancy falling in love and marrying in Andalasia, henceforth becoming king and queen, while Nathaniel, who stays in New York, and Pip, who returns to Andalasia, each write successful autobiographies based on their experiences in the real world. Giselle starts a very popular fashion design business and forms a happy family with Robert and Morgan in New York.

Production

Development:

The initial script of Enchanted, written by Bill Kelly, was bought by Disney's Touchstone Pictures and Sonnenfeld/Josephson Productions for a reported sum of $450,000 in September 1997. The script was written for three years, but it was thought to be unsuitable for Walt Disney Pictures because it was "a racier R-rated movie", inspired by the adult-risque comedy movies in the 1980s and 1990s such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High and American Pie. The first draft of the script had Giselle being mistaken for a stripper when she arrives in New York City. To the frustration of Kelly, the screenplay was rewritten several times, first by Rita Hsiao and then by Todd Alcott. The film was initially scheduled to be released in 2002 with Rob Marshall as director but he withdrew due to "creative differences" between the producers and him. In 2001, director Jon Turteltaub was set to direct the film but he left soon after, later working with Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer on the National Treasure franchise. Adam Shankman became the film's director in 2003, while Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle were hired by Disney to rewrite the script once again. At the time, Disney considered offering the role of Giselle to Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon. However, the project did not take off.

On May 25, 2005, Variety reported that Kevin Lima had been hired as director and Bill Kelly had returned to the project to write a new version of the script. Lima worked with Kelly on the script to combine the main plot of Enchanted with the idea of a "loving homage" to Disney's heritage. He created visual storyboard printouts that covered the story of Enchanted from beginning to end, which filled an entire floor of a production building. After Lima showed them to Dick Cook, the chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, he received the green light for the project and a budget of $85 million. Lima began designing the world of Andalasia and storyboarding the movie before a cast was chosen to play the characters. After the actors were hired, he was involved in making the final design of the movie, which made sure the animated characters look like their real-life counterparts.

Filming:

Enchanted is the first feature-length Disney live-action/traditional animation hybrid since Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988, though the traditionally animated characters do not interact in the live-action environment in the same method as they did in Roger Rabbit; however, there are some scenes where live-action characters share the screen with two-dimensional animated characters, for example, a live-action Nathaniel communicating with a cel-drawn Narissa, who is in a cooking pot. The film uses two aspect ratios; it begins in 2.35:1 when the Walt Disney Pictures logo and Enchanted storybook are shown, and then switches to a smaller 1.85:1 aspect ratio for the first animated sequence. The film switches back to 2.35:1 when it becomes live-action and never switches back, even for the remainder of the animated sequences. When this movie was aired on televised networks, the beginning of the movie (minus the logo and opening credits) was shown in the pillarboxed 4:3 aspect ratio; the remainder of the movie was shown in the 16:9 aspect ratio when it becomes live-action. Lima oversaw the direction of both the live-action and animation sequences, which were being produced at the same time. Enchanted took almost two years to complete. The animation took about a year to finish while the live-action scenes, which commenced filming on location in New York City during the summer of 2006 and were completed during the animation process, were shot in 72 days.

Animation:

Out of the film's 107 minutes of running time, ten of the approximately 13 minutes of animation are at the beginning of the film. Lima tried to "cram every single piece of Disney iconic imagery" that he could into the first ten minutes, which were done in traditional cel animation (in contrast to computer-generated 3-D animation) as a tribute to past Disney fairy tale films such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was the first Disney film theatrically released in America to feature traditional cel animation since Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005). This film, although quite different in terms of plot from any previous Disney film, also contained obvious homages to other Disney films of the distant past, such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, Bon Voyage!, and Savage Sam. As most of Disney's traditional animation artists were laid off after the computer graphics boom of the late 1990s, the 13 minutes of animation were not done in-house but by the independent Pasadena-based company James Baxter Animation, founded by former Disney animator Baxter.

Although Lima wanted the animation to be nostalgic, he wanted Enchanted to have a style of its own. Baxter's team decided to use Art Nouveau as a starting point. For Giselle, the hand-drawn animated character had to be "a cross between Amy Adams and a classic Disney princess. And not a caricature." Seeing Giselle as "a forest girl, an innocent nymph with flowers in her hair" and "a bit of a hippie", the animators wanted her to be "flowing, with her hair and clothes. Delicate." For Prince Edward, Baxter's team "worked the hardest on him to make him look like the actor" because princes "in these kinds of movies are usually so bland." Many prototypes were made for Narissa as Baxter's team wanted her face to "look like Susan Sarandon. And the costumes had to align closely to the live-action design."

To maintain continuity between the two media, Lima brought in costume designer Mona May during the early stages of the film's production so the costumes would be aligned in both the animated and live-action worlds. He also shot some live-action footage of Amy Adams as Giselle for the animators to use as reference, which also allowed the physical movement of the character to match in both worlds. Test scenes completed by the animators were shown to the actors, allowing them to see how their animated selves would move.

Live-Action:

Principal photography began in April 2006 and ended in July. Because of the sequence setting, the live action scenes were filmed in New York City. However, shooting in New York became problematic as it was in a "constant state of new stores, scaffolding and renovation".

The first scene in New York, which features Giselle emerging from a manhole in the middle of Times Square, was filmed on location in the center of the square. Because of the difficulties in controlling the crowd while filming in Times Square, general pedestrians were featured in the scene with hired extras placed in the immediate foreground. Similarly, a crowd gathered to watch as James Marsden and Timothy Spall filmed their scenes in Times Square. However, the scene Lima found the most challenging to shoot was the musical number, "That's How You Know", in Central Park. The five-minute scene took 17 days to finish due to the changing weather, which allowed only seven sunny days for the scene to be filmed. The filming was also hampered at times by Patrick Dempsey's fans. The scene was choreographed by John O'Connell, who had worked on Moulin Rouge! beforehand, and included 300 extras and 150 dancers.

Many scenes were filmed at Steiner Studios, which provided the three large stages that Enchanted needed at the same facility. Other outdoor locations included the Brooklyn Bridge and The Paterno, an apartment building with a curved, heavily embellished, ivory-colored façade located on the corner of Riverside Drive and 116th Street, which is the residence of the film's characters Robert and Morgan.

Music:

The film's score was written by accomplished songwriter and composer Alan Menken, who has worked on a number of Disney films previously. Fellow composer Stephen Schwartz wrote the lyrics for six songs, also composed by Menken. Menken and Schwartz previously worked together on the songs for Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Menken became involved with the film in the early stages of the film's development and invited Schwartz to resume their collaboration. They began the songwriting process by searching for the right moments in the story in which a song moment was allowed. Schwartz found that it was easier to justify situations in which the characters would burst into songs in Enchanted than in other live-action musicals as its concept "allowed the characters to sing in a way that was completely integral to the plot of the story." The three songs Giselle sings contain references to earlier Disney films. The first song played in the film, "True Love's Kiss", was written to be "a send-up of, and an homage to, the style of those Disney animated features", namely, "I'm Wishing" (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) and "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" (Cinderella), during which Disney heroines sing about the joy of being loved. It posed a challenge for Menken and Schwartz because of the "many preconceptions with that number"; it had to be reflective of the era of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella. Accordingly, Amy Adams performed the first song in an operetta style in contrast to the Broadway style of the later songs.

Both "Happy Working Song" and "That's How You Know" also pay tributes to past Disney songs and movies. "Happy Working Song" pays a lyrical homage to such songs as "Whistle While You Work" (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), "The Work Song" (Cinderella), "A Spoonful of Sugar" (Mary Poppins) and "Making Christmas" (The Nightmare Before Christmas), and a musical homage to the Sherman Brothers (with a self-parodic "Alan Menken style" middle eight). "That's How You Know" is a self-parody of Menken's compositions for his Disney features, specifically such big production numbers as "Under the Sea" (The Little Mermaid) and "Be Our Guest" (Beauty and the Beast). To achieve this, Schwartz admitted he had to "push it a little bit further in terms of choices of words or certain lyrics" while maintaining "the classic Walt Disney sensibility". However, Menken noted that the songs he has written for Disney have always been "a little tongue-in-cheek". As the film progresses, the music uses more contemporary styles, which is heard through the adult ballad "So Close" and the country/pop number "Ever Ever After" (sung by Carrie Underwood as a voice-over).

Out of the six completed songs written and composed by Menken and Schwartz, five remained in the finished film. The title song, "Enchanted," a duet featuring Idina Menzel and James Marsden, was the only song of Menken's and Schwartz's authorship and composition that was deleted from the movie.

Special Effects:

The majority of the visual effects shots in Enchanted were done by Tippett Studio in Berkeley, California, who contributed a total of 320 shots. These shots involved virtual sets, environmental effects and CG characters that performed alongside real actors, namely the animated animals during the "Happy Working Song" sequence, Pip and the Narissa dragon during the live-action portions of the film. CIS Hollywood was responsible for 36 visual effects shots, which primarily dealt with wire removals and composites. Reel FX Creative Studios did four visual effects shots involving the pop-up book page-turn transitions while Weta Digital did two.

Out of all the animals that appear in the "Happy Working Song" sequence, the only real animals filmed on set were rats and pigeons. The real animals captured on film aided Tippett Studio in creating CG rats and pigeons, which gave dynamic performances such as having pigeons that carried brooms in their beaks and rats that scrubbed with toothbrushes. On the other hand, all the cockroaches were CG characters.

Pip, a chipmunk who can talk in the 2D world of Andalasia, loses his ability to communicate through speech in the real world so he must rely heavily on facial and body gestures. This meant the animators had to display Pip's emotions through performance as well as making him appear like a real chipmunk. The team at Tippett began the process of animating Pip by observing live chipmunks which were filmed in motion from "every conceivable angle", after which they created a photorealistic chipmunk through the use of 3D computer graphics software, Maya and Furrocious. When visual effects supervisor Thomas Schelesny showed the first animation of Pip to director Kevin Lima, he was surprised that he was a looking at a CG character and not reference footage. To enhance facial expressions, the modelers gave Pip eyebrows, which real chipmunks do not have. During the filming of scenes in which Pip appears, a number of ways were used to indicate the physical presence of Pip. On some occasions, a small stuffed chipmunk with a wire armature on the inside was placed in the scene. In other situations, a rod with a small marker on the end or a laser pointer would be used to show the actors and cinematographer where Pip is.

Unlike Pip, the Narissa dragon was allowed to be more of a fantasy character while still looking like a living character and a classic Disney villain. The CG dragon design was loosely based on a traditional Chinese dragon and Susan Sarandon's live-action witch. When filming the scene which sees the transformation of Narissa from a woman into a dragon, a long pole was used to direct the extras' eyelines instead of a laser pointer. Set pieces were made to move back and forth in addition to having a computer-controlled lighting setup and a repeatable head on the camera that were all synchronized. In the film's final sequence, in which Narissa climbs the Woolworth Building while clutching Robert in her claws, a greenscreen rig was built to hold Patrick Dempsey in order to film his face and movements. The rig was a "puppeteering" approach that involved a robotic arm being controlled by three different floor effects artists.

Release/Box Office:

The film was distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures to 3,730 theatres in the United States. It was distributed worldwide by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International to over 50 territories around the world and topped the box office in several countries including the United Kingdom and Italy. It is the first movie to be released under the Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures name following the retirement of the previous Buena Vista Pictures Distribution.

Enchanted earned $8 million on the day of its release in the United States, placing at #1. It was also placed at #1 on Thanksgiving Day, earning $6.7 million to bring its two-day total to $14.6 million. The film grossed $14.4 million on the following day, bringing its total haul to $29.0 million placing ahead of other contenders. Enchanted made $34.4 million on the Friday-Sunday period in 3,730 theatres for a per location average of $9,472 and $49.1 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday in 3,730 theatres for a per location average of $13,153. Its earnings over the five-day holiday exceeded projections by $7 million. Ranking as the second-highest Thanksgiving opening after Toy Story 2, which earned $80.1 million over the five-day holiday in 1999, Enchanted is the first film to open at #1 on the Thanksgiving frame in the 21st century.

In its second weekend, Enchanted was also the #1 film, grossing a further $16.4 million at 3,730 locations for a per theatre average of $4,397. It dropped to #2 in its third weekend, with a gross of $10.7 million in 3,520 theatres for a per theatre average of $3,042. It finished its fourth weekend at #4 with a gross of $5.5 million in 3,066 locations for a per theatre average of $1,804. Enchanted earned a gross of $127.8 million in the United States and Canada as well as a total of $340.5 million worldwide. It was the 15th highest-grossing film worldwide released in 2007.

My Review:

A really fun classic to look back on! Of course, I still love it so much and I watch it whenever I'm sad. its originality, the soundtrack, its animation, its touch of comedy, the plot, everything. I wish the animators could’ve added more scenes with the animation because I highly admired it. it was just so nice and you can tell they really spent a lot of time on each frame. its so hard to dislike such a great film like this.

Literally one of my all time favourite movies ever since I was a kid. I love everything about this movie from the action, humour, romance and clever remarks and quotes from the characters. Amy Adams does a phenomenal job playing her character and just makes you laugh a lot. Patrick Dempsey nailed this role playing a very sarcastic and charming widower. The chemistry between both Dempsey and Adams is off the charts and Dempsey is so dreamy and charming it's so very easy to be caught up in the movie and you will find yourself rooting for Robert (Dempsey) and Giselle (Adams) to reveal their feelings for each other as you watch them fall for each other.

I love this movie. It was one of my favourite childhood movies and it still is. Love it. The actors did such a good job, I mean perfect actors for this movie, it's fun and romantic at the same time; I highly recommend this film if you haven't seen it already, 9/10.