Disenchanted – Film Review

Disillusioned with life in the city, feeling out of place in suburbia, and frustrated that her happily ever after hasn’t been so easy to find, Giselle turns to the magic of Andalasia for help. Accidentally transforming the entire town into a real-life fairy tale and placing her family’s future happiness in jeopardy, she must race against time to reverse the spell and determine what happily ever after truly means to her and her family.

There was definitely an effort made when it comes to Adam Shankman‘s Disenchanted; a musical fantasy romantic comedy film that also serves as the sequel to 2007’s smash hit Enchanted, which saw a stunning blend of live-action and animation and came complete with a touching, heartwarming story, wonderful musical numbers, and characters that you just couldn’t help but fall in love with.

However, just because there was some effort put into this sequel, doesn’t mean it all paid off. To tell you the truth, Disenchanted is heartbreakingly bad. It’s nowhere near as soul-crushing as Hocus Pocus 2 – which came out earlier this year – but it’s still a hugely unnecessary follow-up that doesn’t add anything worthwhile to this story.

Why couldn’t they have just let it be with the first movie? Why not just let Giselle and Robert live their happily-ever-after in New York and have it be that? Instead, we get a sequel that, for forty minutes, is way too similar to the first film before eventually becoming a rather tired movie where Giselle turns into a villain all thanks to a bad wish she made.

All of the musical numbers in this film are excellent, thankfully, but that’s not the most important quality this movie needed to bring. It needed to have a good story with further depth given to our characters. There needed to be a reason for this movie to come out. There isn’t a good reason.

Why did Disney, after all these years, finally decide to make a sequel to Enchanted? It doesn’t really make a lot of sense as to why they didn’t do this movie a lot sooner. To wait all these years, only to make a sequel that feels so half-baked is more than a little head-scratching.

The story here is easily the thing that bogs the film down the most. It’s incredibly predictable and because of that, it’s never really all that much fun. Of course, there are some scenes where you’ll have a smile on your face and you’ll be able to feel sucked in by that Disney magic, but mostly, it’s kind of bland. Once you see the setup of the film, you’ll already know how it all comes to an end.

Amy Adams is, however, just like in the first film, terrific in the role of Giselle. It really feels like she had no problem whatsoever stepping back into Giselle’s shoes after all these years, and it looks like she had a total blast reprising her role here. She’s effortlessly charming, endearing, and charismatic to watch here, even if Giselle herself doesn’t get much of an arc here.

There’s also Patrick Dempsey returning as Robert, who once again, does a fantastic job. Sadly, he doesn’t get nearly as much to do in this sequel, and he often feels like an afterthought. The second main character is Maya Rudolph‘s Malvina Monroe, who is easily one of the worst Disney villains in a long time.

But the person who easily gets sideswiped the most here is certainly James Marsden as King Edward. In the original film, he was a huge part of the story. He wasn’t in every single scene mind you, but he was still in it for quite a while. In Disenchanted, he has maybe only five minutes or so of screen-time.

There are so many things about this sequel that boggle my mind that I just can’t shake. The music is phenomenal, as are the performances, the costumes, editing, cinematography, and color palette, but it’s outrageously bland in so many ways. The writing is such a step-down from the first film, particularly. What a disappointment. This isn’t a fairy-tale ending by any means.

Disenchanted is an enormously disappointing sequel that constantly fails to justify its existence with an extremely dull script and character arcs that never get fully realized.