Pizza & a Movie #46: "Disenchanted"
“That’s nothing a little glitter wouldn’t fix”
“Disenchanted”
2022 • 1hr 59mins • PG • Stream on Disney+ • Watch the trailer
As I write this at home on Tuesday, Thanksgiving prep is all around me. Piles of ingredients, utensils, holiday energy. But after all the eating is over, you gotta put on a movie. Maybe work on a jigsaw puzzle while you’re at it if you’re feeling virtuous. That’s why we’re following up last week’s Enchanted rewatch with a taste of the new. So grab a slice of pizza or pumpkin pie. Last week we talked Enchanted. This week it’s Part 2 of this Double Feature: Disenchanted.
Here’s the plot. A decade’s gone by. Giselle, Robert and Morgan added a baby to their family unit, but it’s taking the shine off Manhattan. They pick up and move to small town Monroeville, NY. Looks like a fairytale. Every town has a queen, and it ain’t Giselle. Malvina, seemingly christened for villainy, is at the top of the local food chain. She sees newcomer Giselle as her rival. Nancy and Edward visit from Andalasia, giving an increasingly listless Giselle the magical means to live the storybook life again. But she soon realizes her Cinderella-esque surrounds come at the cost of her shading into evil stepmotherhood. Mostly, Morgan bears the brunt. But Malvina’s wise to her, using the wand to up her game to supervillain level. Can Giselle shake her new dastardly impulses before the curse is permanent? And can Robert find his joie de vivre amidst all the magical goings on? And can the mirror, Rosaleen, Ruby, and Pip have their own movie, please, pretty please?
How did we get Disenchanted? When press in ‘07 asked Adams if she’d do a sequel, she said, “I believe that’s in the contract.” In ’10, Variety leaked that Disney was spinning up the next installment with Anne Fletcher attached to direct. They wanted to start shooting the next year. (They didn’t.) The Hollywood Reporter broke in late ’16 that a Fletcher was out and Adam Shankman was in as director. Disney wanted to shoot the next year. (They didn’t.) Finally, in May of ’21, production shifted into high gear. The target changed from theatrical release to Disney+, but Shankman was still directing. But! While those ups and down a wild, check this out. Know who was originally supposed to direct Hocus Pocus 2? (Hey, we covered that!) Shankman. But who ended up in the HP2 director’s chair? That’s right: Fletcher. They swapped movies! Hollywood is weird—streaming doubly so.
Everyone’s older. But what’s the cast been up to since we saw them last? Amy Adams made a mix of light and prestige flicks, earning a couple Golden Globes and a bunch of Oscar nominations. The last great thing she was in was Sharp Objects for HBO. Patrick Dempsey appeared in a handful of mid-grade movies but mostly stuck to Grey’s Anatomy and race car driving. Idina Menzel became a culture queen with the Frozen, did some more stage, and slayed in Uncut Gems. James Marsden did a little of every genre, effectively avoiding typecasting. He recently became Sonic’s dad. (Those movies quietly rule, check ‘em out.)
I have three MVPs of Disenchanted. Sorry, what’s that? Uh huh, uh huh. Okay I’ve just been told you can only have one MVP because “M” stands for “Most”. And that’s a superlative. Well joke’s on you, pal: I never watched baseball. So I have three.
First, Maya Rudolph. She’s having the best time of anyone here. So much acting without moving anything but facial features. Her our-world self plays like a Reese Witherspoon character. This grounded performance shades so smoothly into an enchanted villain I barely noticed. Even when Rudolph is surrounded by silly CGI, she’s amazingly watchable. Disenchanted had Susan Sarandon-sized villain shoes to fill. But, if anything, Rudolph overdelivers on sly, banal evil. In this CGI-laden movie, she’s the best special effect.
MVP number two: Gabriella Baldacchino. Her our-world self slides between childlike feelings and a Turtle Shell-esque enamel of sarcasm exactly like I did as a teen. Feels real. But her magic’d Morgan, a virtual Cinderella, belts out musical verses and whirls through choreography like she’s animated. One well-crafted character is a remarkable achievement on its own. But two? This lady’s going places.
MVP three is Griffin Newman. You probably don’t know him, but I’ve been hearing his voice for hours every week over the last few years. Newman and cohost David Simms run the podcast Blank Check, a review of one runaway director’s body of work at a time. Playing weekly episodes out loud in my home office while I work is one of the things that made me feel like a human being during the pandemic. Here, his “ay I’m walkin’ here” delivery and punch-up quips add crackle to scenes that are just exposition otherwise. Letting him loose may be Disenchanted’s best and bravest gamble.
Let’s talk pros and cons. I don’t give star ratings, just reasons to like movies. That said, the main con is the Disney house style. Everything’s brightly lit like a TV show, which maybe it should have been. But if you can get past that, the pros are these: The main cast is clearly having a great time. And the bit players are really fun. Yvette Brown, Jayma Mays, Oscar Nuñez, Griffin Newman, even Alan Tudyk doing his King Candy voice from Wreck-It Ralph as the wishing wand’s Clippy. Disney hasn’t lost its love of skewering (or exalting?) their own tropes, sourced primarily from Cinderella this time around. And, boy, when was the last time you saw large-scale choreography scenes like this? Very fun seeing that classic musical flare.
Look, mileage varies. But if you’ve got a slice of pizza in your hand (or a slice of pie and a turkey sandwich in your tum) late on a Friday, I think you’ll have a good time. Disenchanted goes down smooth, even if it doesn’t stick in your brain for long. Find all those easter eggs the Disney streaming bunny left for you.
Thanks for joining me on this Double Feature! What would be a good pairing for a future two-parter? And hey, if you liked this, share it with a pal who would too!
NOTES:
The Monroeville, NY of this movie was actually Wicklow, Ireland. Dempsey loved it.
Disney wanted a big name for Pip but couldn’t figure out who. Producer Barry Josephson asked his friend Newman to fill in on a Zoom table read with the cast. He had a weekend to prepare. A week after the table read, Disney told Newman he had the part. Here’s him talking about it in an interview.
Adams’s daughter asked her to make another Enchanted movie, so she did. She calls Disenchanted a love letter to her.
So glad Menzel got her big number this time!
I wish they’d put this in theaters. It has that streaming look—the new made-for-TV movie aesthetic. And it panders to Disney fans while I wish it played to movie-goers at large like Enchanted did. But hey, I’m glad we got it at all.
What a made-during-a-pandemic movie! The village of tested extras instead of gnarly NYC. I think the script justifies the setting change reasonably well though.
Malvina’s two minions are ringers for Cinderella’s two stepsisters. Fun! So many visual Disney references in here.
Read my review of Enchanted if you missed it.
My 7-year-old’s review: “I prefer Disenchanted, it’s more dramatic.”