There are probably a few actresses who could play the role of an animated Disney princess come to life, but let's be thankful it's Amy Adams who is playing it. There are a couple of things that could go terribly wrong with the part. First, even the slightest trace of irony, and the role falls apart. Second, it's a part that requires lots of syrup and goody-goody feelings and gumdrop wishes, and it could get annoying really fast. Adams plays it just right so that we believe her and don't want her to get whisked away to the land of long ago and far away ASAP. She is—not to use a titular pun (because I hate those), but to use the only appropriate word for her performance—enchanting in this role.

The film itself isn't quite at that level. Enchanted is cute, to be sure, and its opening act finds the studio amiably satirizing its cash-cow genre with the kind of precision only a group of insiders can achieve. It's quite a lot of fun, but just as the film hits its stride, it loosens its grip on the comedy and falls into the commonplace, becoming just another entry in the Disney princess genre but with homages to predecessors and in the real world instead of the animated one.

It's sadly hard to remember now the charm of traditional, 2-D animation, but here we start off in the world of Andalasia, bright, cheery, and hand-drawn. The evil queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) never wants to resign her throne, and so for years, she makes sure her stepson Prince Edward (James Marsden) never has the opportunity to meet a maiden with whom he could fall in love. While Edward and his sidekick Nathaniel (Timothy Spall) are hunting a troll in the forest, he hears the song of fair maiden Giselle (Adams), who spends her day creating a fake prince to kiss with the help of her talking woodland friends.

The troll hears the song and runs toward it, and after a fight, Edward comes out victorious, taking Giselle back to the castle where they will marry the next day. Furious over the event, Narissa disguises herself as an old hag, tricks Giselle into approaching a "wishing well," and pushes the damsel into it, sending her to "a place where there are no happily-ever-afters." Giselle arrives in live-action form in that place: Manhattan. Shoved around by New Yorkers, Giselle tries to find her way back home.