Loosely (very loosely) based on the classic book, "Ella Enchanted" comes from the same thread of the sweater from "Shrek". Farcical, hip, and odd, but ultimately pleasing to both the eyes (not the colors, Hathaway), and heart (eh-hem--Hathaway), and it's a good movie to take the kids to, but leave the boys at home. Nonetheless, I liked this movie in the end because it's a cutesy flick to kill time with, and provides some good twists to some old fairy tales. Hathaway plays Ella, a young girl (has an English accent as a girl, but sounds American as a teenager, what up with dat?) born with the unusual distinction of obedience. Given a curse by a powerful, albeit sloppy fairy Lucinda (Vivica A. Fox) she begins falling in love with a prince and journeys to find the end to her curse after her wicked stepsisters begin taking advantage of her.

This was a nice piece of fluff that I enjoyed watching, and its definitely uplifting in the end with the presence of a powerful female hero, female villains, and some female pleasing
love interest courtesy of Prince Char played by the surprisingly likable Hugh Darcy. Firstly, the instant aspect of the film that caught my fancy and softened my skepticism was the presence of none other than Eric Idle who plays the funny narrator. Being a Python fan (which adds to my geekdom), his comedic presence scattered throughout the film
automatically softened me. Not to mention the directors improve upon this by adding the strong presences of Steve Coogan, and the incomparable Joanna Lumley who plays villainess Dame Olga.

The film has the hipness of "Shrek" with the usual pokes at modern pop culture with various musical numbers with contemporary songs, and jabs at Python conveniently scattered throughout the story. Secondly, being the lovelorn horndog I am, I thoroughly enjoyed Anne Hathaway; mostly though, I enjoyed looking at her (hey, she kept my eyes glued to the screen). Her charismatic performance was one of the saving graces of the movie with her competent acting, and often charming ambience to the mood of the tale. She's funny, and pretty quirky at the same times and manages to hold her own amidst all the colors and great supporting cast which were reasonable distractions. Ella is a very good character, especially one for the girls; often times she's very courageous and precocious never backing down from people--unless she's told-- and she's a strong female foundation of the tale that's clearly lacking within the supporting cast, what added double to the quality was yet another gorgeous female character, Parminder Nagra who's a great presence in the movie adding support for Ella's character, and it's good to see a bit of ethnicity during the movie.

The girl's got class, give her more parts! All the while the film is given some good support through its supporting cast of players which give good performances including Fox, Coogan, Minnie Driver as the silent not too talented guardian fairy of Ella, and of course Cary Elwes. It's sad his star has faded in this new time because Elwes is always a good addition to any cast in a movie. He's very conniving in his usual way, and works well as the villain here. He's over the top as would be expected from a fairytale villain and works well here. Otherwise, I couldn't help like this because the film is cute harmless fun often times covered by bright colors, airy scenery, dumb comedy and a really good musical number when Hathaway sings "Somebody to Love" from Queen. It worked pretty damn well, and did I mention she's hot?

I was in the middle of doing my research for the movie which I always do before my review of a movie, and it seems to be the consensus of many fans of the original book that this was a horrible adaptation, and hardly took from the original source material, to whicih I came to the conclusion that this was Hollywood-ized. How else can you explain the utterly derivative material which was the end result of the movie which took so many of its elements from "Shrek". Young maiden kicking ass? Got it, ancient bits of civilization transfered to look modern ala staircase doubling as escalator which has been done time and time again, got it, pop culture references, got it, ogres that looks like shrek? Man, do they have it! And it just seems to keep going. I guess the original producers had no faith in the original text and just decided, "Hey, I hate the book, let's rip off Shrek!"

I mean, yikes, I was squirming from all the unfortunately played out sequences that just
took so much from that cartoon and so many other films that I was just annoyed. What's that? Did someone say token? Well, speaking of such, how under used was Parminder Nagra, eh? For such a talented actress, I was very disappointed that she was only featured in basically three scenes. That's right, three. Now, not only do they subject a great, and more talented actress to play supporting but they take what looked to be a bigger part chop it down to only three basic scenes with barely any dialogue which had me muttering "Token". What's the point of casting such a good actress if you're only going to have her in a few meaningless scenes and any character focus that was on her is dropped?

She begins to notice Ella's secret curse, is involved with her cause, and is her best friend, but why is she barely around? Nagra barely has a role in this movie. She appears in two scenes and basically has no dialogue. So why was she in it in the first place when
they could have cast a no name actress to do so? And her subplot is so cut up. Ella is forced to tell her to go away, and she really does! She disappears for the entire movie, and then only appears in the end of the movie during the happy ending, and at first I could barely spot her. Wow. At least throw us a bone and resolve her sub-plot for our sake, sheesh! Do her some credit and give her a performance she'd be happy with. And while looking at the derivances and tokens (Sorry, Nagra), I just couldn't help notice the underlying sexual theme within the story.

I mean it's pretty tough not to notice a certain sub-conscious sexual theme with a story that involves a curvaceous, busty young girl who must submit to anything anyone demands of her. I just couldn't shake that feeling that perhaps the screenwriters stuck a little too close to that one specific theme. Now, I was prepared to be generous and give this film a bonafide albeit uneasy three stars, but when I saw the final moments of the movie I thought, man this is stupid. All it involves is an overly long musical number, with an overplayed over-used song, while they shamelessly flaunt their stupidity. That's all I'll say. It was so Bollywood.

Though derivative, cheesy, dumb, and sometimes stupid, not to mention a terrible adaptation of the book, I had a nice time with this sweet movie. It's innocent fun saved only by Hathaway's charisma, and Elwes' acting chops.

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