Sunday, December 16, 2007
Enchanted
I loved like the first 10 minutes. It was a very funny send up of the whole Disney movie thing. There is this pretty maiden who lives in a tree. She has lovely dreams about true love's kiss and then wakes up and sings about it to her cartoon animal friends. There is a cartoon chipmunk as well as birds and deer who all help her. Giselle is this innocent maiden who lived with her cartoon animal friends and she sings about true love's kiss while her animal friends help her do things. And it is all very lovely and happy. (This is actually very similar to how I picture attending Yale law school, except the woman does not necessarily need to be a mainden and instead of singing about true love she sings about constitutional moments or something.) The prince hears her and immediately knows he must marry this woman. They meet, continue the song, and decide to have their ceremony the next day. Perfect.
Of-course there is an evil step mother who ruins the plan by sending Giselle to a place where are no happily ever afters, New York City. (Now that I have left I have reromanticized New York as the town of endless hope and possibility, and so my first thought was you are wrong evil stepmother, New York is totally the land of happily ever after.) Anyway, she meets Patrick Dempsey, a cynical divorce lawyer, and begins the process of warming his heart. And this is where I ran into trouble with the movie.
I also watched two episodes of the Girls Next Door today. This is the show about Hugh Hefner's girlfriends on E. And what has struck me about this show is that Hef will have these dinner parties and he will bring other old men with thier respective twenty-something blonde girlfriends. And so you will have this interesting dynamic of older, all fairly accomplished, probably very intelligent old men, with these very young women. And because the show is about the young women not Hef, you will just kind of see these men indulge the women. But I always imagine them later off to the side engaging in serious conversations. And it is like the girls are children or something.
And that is my problem with Giselle, she is a red-headed girl next door. She is a child, all sweet, and pure, and innocent. And Dempsy is playing a middle aged lawyer more or less. And basically he just falls in love with innocence. It is a little creepy. And I watch Girls Next Door, I am not saying that young and innocent isn't a male fantasy, but this movie was made for little girls. And the over the top Disney version of cartoon princes falling at first glance for pretty women is ok, because the princes are usually pretty innocent too. But to send a message to little girls that innocence wins over flesh and blood men, that was different. It was strange and kind of upsetting.
Of-course there is an evil step mother who ruins the plan by sending Giselle to a place where are no happily ever afters, New York City. (Now that I have left I have reromanticized New York as the town of endless hope and possibility, and so my first thought was you are wrong evil stepmother, New York is totally the land of happily ever after.) Anyway, she meets Patrick Dempsey, a cynical divorce lawyer, and begins the process of warming his heart. And this is where I ran into trouble with the movie.
I also watched two episodes of the Girls Next Door today. This is the show about Hugh Hefner's girlfriends on E. And what has struck me about this show is that Hef will have these dinner parties and he will bring other old men with thier respective twenty-something blonde girlfriends. And so you will have this interesting dynamic of older, all fairly accomplished, probably very intelligent old men, with these very young women. And because the show is about the young women not Hef, you will just kind of see these men indulge the women. But I always imagine them later off to the side engaging in serious conversations. And it is like the girls are children or something.
And that is my problem with Giselle, she is a red-headed girl next door. She is a child, all sweet, and pure, and innocent. And Dempsy is playing a middle aged lawyer more or less. And basically he just falls in love with innocence. It is a little creepy. And I watch Girls Next Door, I am not saying that young and innocent isn't a male fantasy, but this movie was made for little girls. And the over the top Disney version of cartoon princes falling at first glance for pretty women is ok, because the princes are usually pretty innocent too. But to send a message to little girls that innocence wins over flesh and blood men, that was different. It was strange and kind of upsetting.
# posted by Julia @ 9:49 PM 
