Movie Review: Enchanted

This one's a fun little ride. It shows what happens when the naive little Disneyfied world collides with modern-day New York City. It takes a lot of the Disney conventions and gently pokes fun at them, encouraging us to laugh.
Since it is pretty much a Disney-ish movie, you know how it's going to end. Everyone gets their Happily Ever After. Sorry if that spoiled it for you, but geez, Kev & I both saw the ending coming from a mile away. You probably will too. It doesn't matter, as the "how will it END?" really isn't there. The movie knows you know how it's going to end, and therefore doesn't waste any plot-points on hiding it. Good move, in my opinion - that screen time is better served giving us another joke (like Prince Charming stabbing a bus - and getting completely told off by the bus driver).
Susan Sarandon camps it up as The Evil Stepmother - and she does a great job. The only jarring note was her platform "KISS"-style boots. I thought they looked awfully clunky, but then again I'm sure that pretty much everyone else is going to love them, so it's not like those ruined it or anything. Her...um...assets are displayed to great advantage, I must say.

And Timothy Spall. God love him, that guy's found his niche and he's gonna play it for all he's worth. For those of you that remember him as "Wormtail" from the Harry Potter movies...well, let's just say you won't be surprised at his character.

Prince Charming is appealingly brainless, and James Marsden makes it work. I have no idea how - in most hands that kind of naive, brainless approach by a "real person" would've been incredibly annoying, but he makes it, appropriately enough, charming. And if he's doing his own singing...WELL. Great voice on whoever it was that did the songs.
Same with Amy Adams, a/k/a "Giselle", a/k/a "Prince Charming's intended". She was the perfect choice for this role, as she plays the naive, almost brainless "Disney Princess-to-be". I do like the scene where she discovers "angry". It's VERY well done. And again, if she did her own singing...brava.

Anyway, it's a fun spoof of the traditional "Disney" style movies, without breaking the "happily-ever-after" requirement.
Excellent.

Movie Review: Mister Magoriam's Wonder Emporium

This is an extremely bizarre movie. For those of you that haven't seen it, Dustin Hoffman plays Mr. Magoriam, a magical man who owns a magical toy store. When he decides that 243 years is long enough to live, he leaves the toy store to his assistant, "Mahoney". The magical toy store is evidently sentient as well, and expresses its displeasure at losing Magoriam by, essentially, throwing a fit. The magic stops working, everything turns black, and Mahoney decides to sell the store.

Subplots: Mahoney is a child prodigy-turned-frustrated composer. She keeps trying to make "the perfect composition" but never can quite do so. Turns out she needs to believe in herself.
There's a small boy who helps out in the store, and whose only friend is Mahoney. He's not only a magical kid, he's a total freak - building life-size statues of Abraham Lincoln out of Lincoln Logs, for example, and doing so in a matter of minutes. He collects hats. His mother expresses concern about his lack of friends. He says he doesn't know how. Mom says "introduce yourself." So he does, to...
The accountant, Henry. Magoriam has hired Henry to dig through over 100 years of receipts, notes, and random business papwerwork to find out how much of a legacy Magoriam is leaving to Mahoney. The only amusing points of the movie really came when dealing with the accountant. Magoriam decides that an accountant must be a "counting mutant", so everyone calls him "mutant". And he accepts it. I don't get it.
Anyway, the kid introduces himself to Henry, the "mutant", then gets Henry to walk him home. He invites Henry up to see his hat collection, nad he and Henry start playing "pretend" with all the hats. Mom, of course, shows up in the middle of their game and looks extremely disapproving about all this.
The movie ends, of course, with Mahoney deciding she does have the magic after all, and the store is restored to normal.

I found it highly annoying. Let's take the kid. Mom's barely there, but fine, she's a single mom, cut her some slack. But her interactions with her kid are horrible. Her suggestions on how to make friends are "find someone you don't know, and introduce yourself." That's it. The kid's already told her that all the other kids his age consider him a freak, so who does she think he's going to make friends with? And once he comes home with a friend, she kicks the friend out. Great, mom. Let's just make it perfectly clear that you're unhappy your kid isn't normal, hey? And he should just KNOW how to become normal and make you happy. Whatever.

Mahoney is another irritant. Much is made about her inability to finish a composition, evidently because she doesn't believe in herself. She has many awards littering her apartment, showing she won many piano playing competitions, prizes, scholarships...and yet, at the toy store, she encounters someone who says he was in her Physics class in college. Um...what? If you're good enough to win prizes, awards, and scholarships for your musical talent, you don't go to a generic local college and take PHYSICS class - you go to Interlochen or Juilliard or Tanglewood to learn how to be a better musician! You surround yourself with music, learn how to write music, play music with your musical peers - you don't go to PHYSICS classes!
By the way, with all the noise made about her needing to believe in herself and then she'll be able to finish her composition, the composition gets rather left out of the denoument of the story. Just so you know - don't go waiting around to hear what happens to her composition. She doesn't finish it.

And evidently all it took for her to believe in herself was for Henry-the-mutant to believe in her. Tell me you didn't see that coming.

Magoriam's death, by the way, was pretty weird. He just decides one day that, even though he's perfectly healthy and happy, he's done living. Bye.

I'm seeing a lot of problems with that concept. I imagine a conversation after that movie: "Daddy...why did mommy decide to leave us?" "She didn't, she was very sick and there was nothing we could do." "But Mr. Magoriam died because he wanted to. Why did mommy want to leave us?"

Yeah, thanks.
So, the messages for your kids in this movie are:
People die because they want to.
Make new friends, but only of people your own age, even if you're a freak and nobody your own age will talk to you, because otherwise mommy and daddy will be disappointed in you.
Believe in yourself and you can do anything - except what you really really wanted to do in the first place.

Okeydokey then.

Dustin Hoffman, and the credits, were really the only enjoyable parts of this movie. Well, other than Justin Bateman getting called "mutant". A lot.