Enchanted

Critics are clearly enchanted with Disney's Enchanted, about an animated princess who is banished by an animated wicked queen to live a real-life existence in New York. "What results is a heart-winning musical comedy that skips lightly and sprightly from the lily pads of hope to the manhole covers of actuality, if you see what I mean. I'm not sure I do," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. Clearly critics have had a difficult time describing the film. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times calls it a "revisionist fairy tale," and, later in her review, "Snow White as redone by John Waters." But Peter Howell in the Toronto Star has few reservations about it. It is, he says, "the most thoroughly delightful Disney release in many a moon [and] hearkens back to an almost forgotten era when the late Walt and his crew could do no wrong." Several critics remark that the film is clever enough to delight adults while cleverly appealing to young girls, as well. (Young boys may be a different story.) Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times regards it as "an adroit combination of wised-up and happily-ever-after." To be sure, the film leaves a few critics feeling grumpy. Gene Seymour in Newsday concludes that it's "a shimmering pastiche of missed opportunities."