Disney+
may have been operating for a few years now, but I must admit that I’m still
not entirely sold on the overall value of the platform. With the exception of The
Mandalorian and maybe a Marvel show or two, I still can’t shake the feeling
that the service is just a place for Disney to dump the content deemed unworthy
of a big screen release so they don’t have to write those productions off
completely. Despite this suspicion, I still decided to give Disenchanted
a shot because of how wonderful I found its precursor to be. I gotta say, if
nothing else they nailed the title, because disenchanted is exactly how I feel
after watching this drab and ennui-inducing sequel.
One thing I do appreciate about Disenchanted
is that it at least tries to do something different rather than simply
rehashing the story of Enchanted with slight variations. It does not
attempt to do the fish-out-of-water thing that the first film did, but the
charm of this idea was a big part of why Enchanted was such a success. Disenchanted
doesn’t have anything in it that comes even close to replacing that charm.
Amy Adams, who is back as the doe-eyed Giselle, gets to show a different side
of her character that is fun to watch, and James Marsden is just as goofy and
charming as he was in the first film in the (regrettably) few scenes that he is
in, but any uniqueness and cleverness that was present in Enchanted is
missing here and what we’re left with is a cliché-storm that, unlike Enchanted,
is played straight without any irony, whether they’re fairytale cliches or
bratty teenagers growing up cliches. The script is flat and the story is as
thin as my patience to get to the end of this movie, but somehow it keeps
dragging on and on regardless.
One of the biggest factors
contributing to the excessive length is the sheer amount of musical numbers
that Disenchanted has, none of which are memorable or enjoyable (well,
the villain vs. villain song isn’t all bad). This is, frankly, shocking, as the
legendary Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz are behind the soundtrack in what is
undeniably their most lackluster effort to date. Instead of having three or
four great songs like Enchanted did, Disenchanted just throws a
whole bunch of trash at your ears hoping that something will stick, and not
even the great Idina Menzel is spared from the bad songwriting (but at least
she does get to sing... It’s still baffling to me that the people who created Enchanted
somehow thought it was a good idea to cast her and then cut all of her songs).
If you were to fast forward through all of the musical numbers you would not
miss a thing, and what you’d be left with is a boring forty-odd minute story
that would feel more at home on the Disney Channel than on a serious streaming
service.
Skip Disenchanted and rewatch Enchanted
instead. There’s no magic to be found here.
Disenchanted
is now available on Disney+.
This review was first published in The Keizertimes on December
9th, 2022. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/
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