Disenchanted (2022)
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Disenchanted Movie Review
Disenchanted is a 2022 live-action/animated musical fantasy comedy film directed by Adam Shankman and starring Amy Adams. It is an undeniably entertaining, but very mediocre sequel.
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“You’re hilarious.
Delusional, but hilarious“
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Years after her happily ever after, Giselle, Robert and Morgan move to a new community and Andalasia and the real world are thrown off-balance. This is your very clichéd story of a caring mother having a difficult time with her rebellious daughter. Eventually, they sort out their differences and they come to a mutual understanding. You know this plot the moment you see it and you know how it will play it, which is exactly what happened later down the line.
And therein lies the biggest issue of this movie – its unoriginality. Comparing it to its predecessor will make it even worse. As a standalone movie it would have fared much better, but ‘Enchanted’ was such a breath of fresh air as the movie that pretty much introduced the postmodern narrative to a Disney feature. This one, however, has nothing meaningful to say and what we are left with are a series of rather amusing and charming, but slight plot points.
Amy Adams is just wonderful as Giselle. She still has it in this role as she was radiant and lovable through and through. She had the most fun playing the evil stepmother in those very campy, but delightfully over-the-top scenes. She is terrific, but others were infinitely inferior. The daughter character was typical, Patrick Dempsey was ridiculously sidelined and the same goes for James Marsden and Idina Menzel. Only Maya Rudolph manages to make an impact in a campy, but very fun turn.
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Disenchanted is very reminiscent of your typical ‘Once Upon a Time’ episode. Especially is that evident in the whole emphasis on wishes and curses. Thus, the movie very much felt like an overly extended television episode, though undeniably the visuals, costumes, production design and score elevated it to a cinematic status. But the soundtrack was quite poor with most songs being uninspired and even copies of their previous works with this one Idina Menzel number being a rip-off of Let It Go and Into the Unknown, which was in and of itself hilarious and sad. I did have a lot of fun watching this movie and laughing at its campy tone and fun humor, but it will unquestionably quickly dissipate from my mind.
Undeniably fun and funny in its campiness, Disenchanted is also charming throughout, visually delightful and it features a wonderful turn from Amy Adams, who is just as lovely here as she was in the original. However, whereas Enchanted was this cleverly postmodern take on Disney classics that had so much to say, this one is totally empty with a storyline that is beyond clichéd and uninspired. The supporting characters are also weakly handled and the soundtrack is quite poor with Idina Menzel basically ripping off her own Frozen songs hilariously so. This is passable entertainment for sure, but it’s basically an overly glorified and cinematic Once Upon a Time episode and nothing more than that.
My Rating – 3
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