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Enchanted
Directed by Kevin Lima
Written by Bill Kelly
Starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon, Timothy Spall, Rachel Covey and Idina Menzel
Narrated by Julie Andrews
Classification: G
Rating: ***

Enchanted is the story of a naive fairy princess banished by a wicked stepmother to live in modern-day New York, a city crowded with eight million candidates to play Grumpy. The film begins with 12 minutes of 2-D animation, the classic Disney cartoon style of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Once Princess Giselle (Amy Adams) kerplops in a Times Square sewer, however, the film turns mostly to live action.

The movie's big kick – what makes Enchanted live up to its title – is that the further Giselle progresses in New York, the more we feel like we've tumbled into a timeless Disney Neverland.

That's because every other scene is a send-up of vintage Disney lore. For instance, Giselle wakes up in the messy apartment of a Good Samaritan (single father Patrick Dempsey). Deciding to clean up, she sticks her head out the window and bursts into song. Just like in Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, the wildlife surrounding our carolling princess takes note and joins in a co-ordinated, royally happy work force.

Only this is New York, right? So instead of bunnies and bluebirds we're talking scruffy rats and sooty pigeons – all scrubbing and dancing to the musical number Happy Work Song, itself a knowing tribute to Snow White's Whistle While You Work.

The end of the song, however, is calculated to appeal to today's more cynical young Disney enthusiast. On the final note, a suddenly famished pigeon turns and, with the flash of its beak, gobbles down its startled cockroach helper.

Enchanted remains fun throughout, thanks to more mischievous updates of familiar Disney scenes. Poison fruit comes in the form of a vile apple martini, while the magic mirror here is a motel television that keeps Giselle's fairyland rescuing committee, led by the bumbling Prince Edward (James Marsden), running in endless circles. The princess, meanwhile, falls in true love with Dempsey's skeptical modern bachelor.

It isn't saying much to suggest Adams and Dempsey are improvements on the vapid fairy-tale royals who populated 1930s Disney animated films. Dempsey gracefully underplays his part, getting by with a look of bemused wonder. He's a good sport, handsome as a young Cary Grant: a fitting ideal for the dreamy Giselle (and every mooning princess in the audience). Adams plays Princess Giselle as an alarmingly openhearted naif. She's not much different here than she was in her Academy Award-nominated performance in Junebug. Except she trips and stumbles a lot. The result is the klutziest, most vulnerable Disney princess ever, someone tweenage girls can identify with.

Now onto the bad news: The film obviously hoped to provide girls in the audience a surrogate in Dempsey's starry-eyed daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey). Except they don't give Covey anything to do other than beam happily whenever Princess Giselle enters the room.

Admirers of classic Disney animation will notice the absence of the magnificent set pieces that inspired audiences with wonder. The film tries to replicate Sleeping Beauty's epic confrontation with the evil witch in gloomy, Gothic Forbidden Mountain. Here, the wicked stepmother (Susan Sarandon) attacks Giselle at a ball just after she loses her slipper – another reference to Cinderella. At which point Sarandon turns into a fire-breathing, six-storey tall dragon lady.

The special effect is disconcerting, and not all that special. It's as if in the final reel nervous producers went, “Wait a minute, we haven't given boys anything yet; better throw in a Transformer fight scene.”

Though Disney's latest trips and stumbles a few times, just like Princess Giselle, audiences will no doubt excuse the film its occasional lapses. Enchanted manages the trick of recasting sugar spun Disney fairy tales of old into a winning, modern-day comedy. Walt Disney would be impressed, especially when the first week's box office comes in. Apparently, there is still some magic left in the Magic Kingdom.

Special to The Globe and Mail