Disenchanted picks up 10 years after the events of Enchanted as Giselle (Amy Adams) realizes that happily ever after in the real world isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be. In an attempt to regain her happy ending, she moves the family to the suburban town of Monroeville, forcing her husband Robert (Patrick Dempsey) to commute daily to New York City, her teenage stepdaughter Morgan (Gabriella Baldacchino) to attend a new school and Giselle to be left alone with her baby, Sofia, in a their dilapidated house in desperate need of repairs.
One day, Giselle’s friends and Sofia’s godparents —King Edward (James Marsden) and Queen Nancy (Idina Menzel)—come from Andalasia and bestow a magic wand upon the baby. Giselle continues to fail at life by butting heads with the head of the town council Malvina (Maya Rudolpoh) and unintentionally embarrassing Morgan in front of the school. Frustrated, she uses the magic wand and wishes for a fairytale life. Monroeville transforms into a picturesque provincial fairytale fantasy: Robert is off on a quest, Morgan is docile and content, and Giselle is perfectly happy now that everything is finally working out. That is, until she realizes she’s slowly turning into a wicked stepmother and must break the spell before the clock strikes at midnight and wicked stepmother takes over for good.
Disenchanted is a sequel that nearly everyone wanted, but due to it languishing in developmental limbo for 15 years after the original, the movie is past its prime. Characters have aged (some more noticeable than others), which isn’t a huge deal, but it creates incongruity when the supposed ageless animated characters from Andalasia appear.
The main conflict of Disenchanted is the family: how this move to the suburbs uproots and creates turmoil within the family unit. Amy is unhappy with the realities of peasant life and uses a magic wand to make it all better. This spell turns the denizens of Monroeville, including Morgan and Robert, into NPCs with no agency. Only Giselle is aware of what happened, but eventually she loses control as she starts turning a villainess against her will, which—then and only then—does she realize there are unintended consequences of her wish and want to undo the spell.
In the end, no one learns any lessons or has any growth because the spell breaks and they awaken from a dream, unaware that anything happened (Giselle and Morgan being the exception). Everything goes back to normal, but the same root problems that were there before still exist: Giselle’s struggles living in a mundane world. Even Morgan —who was rightfully angry at Giselle and angsty about the move—doesn’t get those particular resolved issues.
The art direction is at times is quite nice. Giselle’s house, both in its fixer-upper state and pink floral chateau, is beautiful. The costumes are—for the most part—a miss as there isn’t a cohesive color palette or design style. Giselle looks best when she’s put in bold jewel tones that make her hair and skin tone pop. However, the townsfolk’s fairy tale costumes feel generically medieval. While Prince Edward’s royal uniform looks great, his military regalia looks off-the-shelf and tacky.
Speaking of Edward, James Marsden is one of the stars of the show and a fan favorite from Enchanted, but like Robert, he is disappointedly sidelined. Instead Nancy represents the royal duo to aid Giselle in her time of need. This is a disappointment because we adore these characters yet hardly get any time with them because the film needs to make room for lackluster new characters. Maya Rudolph—the town’s mean mom and foil to Giselle—is an unneeded antagonist. She muddies the plot as instead of just focusing on overcoming Giselle’s turn to dark side, she now has to contend with another villain attempting to muck things up.
Newcomer Gabriella Baldacchino, who replaced Rachel Covey, is phenomenal as the teenage Morgan and has an impressive set of pipes to rival Adams at that. Likewise, Amy Adams has delightful character-acting moments as she schizophrenically transforms between the two of Giselles: the kind Giselle and the wicked Giselle. These scenes are reminiscent of the back and forth between Andy Serkis’ Gollum and from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. While both of these leading are great, the script can’t decide on who the main heroine should be—Giselle or Morgan—so instead, it tries to equally focus on both, but neither’s character arc is satisfying as a result.
Traditional animation scenes were one of the unique aspects of the original film and there are moments where the 2D animation is brought back: an unneeded intro and outro featuring Pip the squirrel reading a storybook of Giselle’s life to his children, a brief scene where Morgan goes to Andalasia for help, and a few shots of Edward fighting a magical force in Andalasia. However, even when Enchanted came out, the Disney no longer had an active 2D animation division and these scenes had to be farmed out to another animation house: James Baxter Animation, studio of former Disney animator James Baxter. Baxter’s beautiful animation is missed in Disenchanted. Another studio took over, but the contrast between the old animation and new, which are showcased together in the opening scene, is obvious. Overall the animation is neither good nor bad; it’s simply passable, lacking the charm, warmth, and nuance from the first film.
Regarding the music, Enchanted‘s original songwriting duo, Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, were brought back for the sequel. However, the songs are lackluster and unmemorable. This isn’t due to a lack of trying or talent on their part, as they are notably Disney legends and exceptional musical talent themselves, but it goes back to problems with the superficial script. The original songs had depth and meaning as they showed the evolution of Giselle from being a flat two-dimensional princess to a well-rounded three-dimensional woman. In this movie, the songs just seem like songs for the sake of having songs, but they serve no deeper meaning or purpose, which is unfortunate.
Disenchanted has some fun moments, but lacks the charm, depth, and tongue-in-cheek humor of the original. Ultimately, it was probably best that Disenchanted was released on Disney+, where not that many people will see it and it won’t really have that much of an impact in the grand storybook of Disney.
Disenchanted is available exclusively on Disney+ on November 16, 2022.
★★1/2
