COULD IT BE MAGIC? (DISENCHANTED)

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There are certain Disney movies that will always have a special place in your heart as a parent.

In our family, Kevin Lima's 2007 animated and live action comedy 'Enchanted' is one of them.

'Enchanted' was one of the first films my daughter connected with as a child.

But it is also a real joy to watch.

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Some of that is down to 'Enchanted''s clever reworking of classic Disney fairytale tropes.

The film affectionately parodies Disney classics, riffing on the usual ingredients - the innocent Princess, the evil Queen, the protective animal, the dumb Prince - in a story that transports them all via a portal from the animated kingdom of Andalasia to real life New York.

Emerging from a manhole cover in Times Square, Amy Adams' Giselle is an innocent abroad.

Raised in a fantasy land of music, romance and talking animals, she has to cope with the harshness of the big city but soon finds an unlikely Prince in the shape of Patrick Dempsey's divorce lawyer Robert Phillip.

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Robert and his young daughter, Rachel Covey's Morgan are charmed by Giselle after stumbling upon her on the city streets.

Yet somehow even in the real world, Gisele has the ability to conjure up some magic - bursting into song and getting pigeons, rats and bugs to help clean Robert's apartment.

Her presence, though, triggers an exodus from the animated world to the Big Apple, with James Marsden's valiant but not very bright Prince Edward heading via the portal to Times Square to win her back with the help of a chipmunk, Pip.

However Susan Sarandon's evil Queen Narissa and her put upon sidekick, Timothy Spall's Nathaniel do all they can to keep Edward and Giselle apart and unleash havoc in New York.

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With a pre-'Frozen' Idina Menzel also in the cast as Robert's girlfriend Nancy, Lima's film bursts with razor sharp gags, catchy tunes and enjoyable dance numbers that children and their parents can enjoy.

It features pitch perfect performances from the cast - especially Adams, Marsden, Dempsey, Menzel, Spall and Sarandon.

The quality of the songwriting is such that three tunes by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz - 'That's How You Know,' 'Happy Working Song' and 'So Close' - were Oscar nominated.

It also boasts a catctly sweet pop song, Carrie Underwood's 'Ever Ever After' which every time I hear it conjures up memories of my daughter sitting down to watch it on DVD as a four year old.

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A big hit at the box office, Disney has been trying to work out an 'Enchanted' sequel since 2010.

You can kind of understand why it has taken so long to hit on a formula.

There are a number of routes the writers could go.

They could do the obvious thing and plump for a reverse plot, with the characters in New York finding themselves having to go to Andalasia but that would it make it more of a cartoon.

They could keep the action in New York but introduce a new threat from Andalasia but wouldn't that make it more of the same?

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For 'Disenchanted,' director Adam Shankman and his writing team of Richard LaGravenese, J David Stern, David N Weiss and scriptwriter Brigitte Hales have chosen to take the action out New York but keep it in the real world.

However the passage of time - 15 years - poses an additional problem for them with a much older cast to deal with.

Robert's daughter Morgan would now be in her twenties, so they have decided to set the sequel 10 years on from the original.

This means Rachel Covey is replaced as Morgan by Gabriella Baldacchino to enable the character to remain at least a teenager in high school.

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Having hit on the catchy title for the film - 'Disenchanted' - Shankman and his writers need to explain why they have chosen it.

The film starts in the animated kingdom of Andalasia with Griffin Newman's Pip telling a bedtime story to his chipmunk children who are eager to hear what happened next to Giselle and Robert.

Reaching for the 'Disenchanted' book, Pip warns them and us that the tale is not all sweetness and light and happy ever afters.

We learn Robert and Giselle have had  baby daughter, played by twins Lila and Mary Jackson, but are finding life in Upper Manhattan exhausting.

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Morgan has become a typical teenager and has grown apart from her stepmother whose sunny Disney Princess optimism she finds embarrassing.

So in order to inject some magic into their lives, Giselle and Robert decide to move upstate to the suburban town of Monroeville - much to the annoyance of Morgan.

When they arrive at their new home which is meant to look like a fairytale castle, the electrics are up the left and it is still undergoing significant reservation.

They are also visited by Maya Rudolph's nosey queen bee, the town council chief Malvina Monroe and her sidekicks, Jayma Mays' Ruby and Yvette Nicole Brown's Rosaleen who come bearing gifts but are also trying to suss Giselle out.

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The first day of Morgan in high school and Robert's commute by train to New York goes disastrously, with him beginning the day spilling coffee all over her.

This forces Morgan to abandon her usual black t-shirt and jeans for school for a bright breezy dress from Giselle's wardrobe.

On their way into high school, they encounter Malvina and her underlings who have erected a stall to lobby for her son, Kolton Stewart's Tyson Monroe to be elected prince of the town's annual fairytale themed ball.

While Robin grumps about her first day at high school, Giselle and Robert are visited by Edward who is now Andalasia's King and Nancy his Queen who travel from the animated world to the real world via a wishing well in their back garden.

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Nancy gifts Giselle a wish granting wand and an instruction scroll in case she ever needs them to transform her life, while Edward gives Robert his sword in case he needs to protect his castle.

The next day when Giselle tries to ape Malvina by setting up a cupcake stall to lobby for Morgan as the princess of the ball, not only is she berated by her stepdaughter but the local queen bee tries to shut her down, telling her she needs permission and to shut it down immediately.

Stung by Morgan's jibe that she'll never be her mother, Giselle is surprised to see Pip in the real world.

However she is so disenchanted with her life decides to use the wand Nancy gave her to wish Monroeville were more like Andalasia.

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This means Robert is now a fearless warrior who doesn't have the skillset to fight dragons.

Malvina is a Queen in a town that occasionally bursts into song.

Morgan is a sweet natured fairytale stepdaughter.

However there's a side effect of the wand's spell.

Because she is a stepmother to Morgan, Giselle starts to develop the traits of a fairytale wicked stepmother - vanity, cruelty and ambition which sets her on collision course with Malvina.

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Pip also turns into her sidekick cat and starts to develop his own feline evil traits.

However it also poses a threat to the future of Andalasia which becomes more vulnerable as its fairytale magic seeps into the real world.

Can Giselle be saved from becoming a full on Wicked Stepmother?

Will Andalasia disappear? 

How will Malvina cope with a powerful rival?

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What can Morgan, Robert, Nancy and Edward do to prevent things spiralling out of control?

It is to Shankman and his writers' credit that they haven't gone for a lazy rehash of the original and have tried to come up with a story that has a different twist to the previous formula.

'Disenchanted,' though, doesn't work on so many different levels.

A lot of that is down to weaknesses in LaGravenese, Stern, Weiss and Hales' plot which lumbers some members of the original cast with really uninspiring roles.

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The decision to move the story to the suburbs means the earthiness of New York, which was the perfect contrast to the fairytale world of Andalasia in the original movie, is badly missed.

Monroeville may look pretty but it offers very little as a location to the story, other than picture perfect blandness.

The character of Giselle also hasn't really developed in the intervening years.

A potential plot strand from the original film about her setting up a successful fashion brand is inexplicably dropped and she is confined o simply being a housewife.

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As a result, 'Disenchanted' feels from the start of the movie terribly regressive rather than empowering and never really manages to shake that off.

Robert barely registers in the film which is mostly focussed on Giselle losing her connection with Robin.

And while Nancy is deployed in the third act leaving Edward behind to protect Andalasia, you suspect it is because of Idina Menzel's prowess as a singer.

Adams certainly gives her all aa Giselle but unfortunately for her the gags she delivers and Menken and Schwartz's songs just aren't up to scratch.

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Baldacchino does her best with a stock teenager role, while Dempsey seems lost and acts as if he has wandered into a Hallmark movie.

Menzel does what you expect her to do which is to belt out bombastic songs like the showbiz trooper that she is, when required.

Marsden, who was one of the highlights of the original, badly overacts in a part that seems apallingly thin compared to what he had in 2007.

Newman is also a little irritating as Pip, while Alan Tudyk provides some levity as the voice of the Scroll.

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Oscar Nunez from the US version of 'The Office' is alright in a dual role as a coffee shop owner and talking mirror while Mays and Brown do an adequate job as Malvina's dumb sidekicks.

Arguably the biggest problem with the script, though, is the part that Rudolph is saddled with.

Rudolph never quite convinces as Malvina jumps around from being the town queen bee to a fairytale Evil Queen.

It an odd villain role undermined by the fact that the script tells us she is not really capable of matching Giselle's power as a wicked stepmother and, as a result, she is not able to summon up the menace that Sarandon had in the 2007 film.

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Timothy Spall's absence is also striking and nobody seems to even reference what became of his character Nathaniel in the real world after the success of his published memoir.

While Shankman delivers a pretty looking production, watching 'Disenchanted' is like coming across an old boyfriend or girlfriend who have really aged and have become really dull.

The magic that was once there has simply disappeared.

There is no spark, little joy to be had.

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You can't help feeling, given the difficult gestation this sequel had, that someone in Disney really ought to have stepped in earlier and said: 'Look lads, this just isn't going to work'.

It's a pity because misfiring sequels can sometimes knock some of the lustre off the original.

'Enchanted' doesn't deserve that.

Please Disney, the next time it looks like a sequel is struggling to come together, just admit defeat and invest in something different, something fresh instead of getting a committee to write it.

Sometimes when it comes to movie magic, it's better to leave well alone instead of trying to recreate it.

('Disenchanted' was made available for streaming on Disney+ on November 18, 2022)