Cast: Amy Adams, James Marsden, Patrick Dempsey, Rachel Covey, Susan Sarandon and Timothy Spall
Running time: 103 minutes
Distributor: Berjaya HVN

A BEAUTIFUL maiden? Check. A prince on a horse? Check. An evil stepmother? Check. Dragon? Check.

Throw in the elements of Cinderella, Snow White and all those fantastical fairytales and you get Enchanted, albeit with a twisted happy ending and a co-existence of fact and fiction.

The story starts out in animation in a place called Andalasia, where the lovely Giselle (Adams) sings about her “true love’s kiss” and meets prince Edward (Marsden).

They decide to get married, much to the dismay of Edward’s stepmother, queen Narissa (Sarandon), who wants to inherit the kingdom. She disguises as an old hag and banishes Giselle into the real world with no happy ever after.

Giselle lands in the middle of New York and is completely lost, having no idea how far reality is from fairytale.

She is taken in by Robert (Dempsey) and his daughter Morgan (Covey) and encounters new concepts such as divorce, dating and anger.

Meanwhile, Edward, with the help of chipmunk Pip, and Narissa’s sidekick Nathaniel (Spall), also enters the real world to find Giselle – the former with the intention to save her, the latter to kill her.

The crunch comes when Edward finds Giselle, who realises she’s in love with Robert (which did not go down well with Robert’s fiancee).

Meanwhile, Nathaniel no longer feels loyal to Narissa and she decides to come to New York to kill Giselle herself.

Narissa succeeds in making Giselle eat the poison apple, promising it would erase her bad memories. However, a “true love’s kiss” from Robert revives her, which sends Narissa into an angry fit, turning herself into a dragon.

And yes, of course there was a happy ending somewhere at the end, which was quite predictable but it didn’t bother me because it was an enjoyable watch.

If you have faithfully followed some of Walt Disney’s classics, you would understand the subtle and comedic references to them, and how different they are from the real world!

Now, if only I can get a hold of Pip for a pet. – Review by SARAH CHEW