Fun family viewing

This is a fun film. It had the audience (and even me) laughing out loud at times. It was enchanting. Disney flexed its fairytale muscles in this film to weave its spellbinding magic while at the same time not being afraid to have a dig at itself. There is a great scene where the Princess sings in a New York apartment and is answered not with nice forest animals but rats, cockroaches and city pigeons. The cleaning work gets done in a rather eeeewwww fashion.

Safe-ish

If you’re looking to take the family out on Boxing Day to see a film then this is the film to see. It’s “G” rated although in my opinion there are some adult concepts (themes) which perhaps should have pushed this film to “PG.”

Story

A Princess gets shoved into our world and is later followed by the Prince with a chip monk and other characters. There is loads of fun to be had as the Prince and Princess struggle to cope in the real world with their very ideal fairytale worldviews.

Disney’s new message

Disney perhaps has realised that people have become hardened to the fairytale notions of prince charmings and true loves kiss and happily ever after. We have become a tough audience and Shrek certainly has thrown a good deal of cynicism in to the fairytale dream.

So they go for a blend. The clash between the singing, dancing, naive princes meets the divorce lawyer. He learns something of the spark of love and she matures enough to live in the real world.

The divorce lawyer who helps her out has been dating ‘Nancy’ for five years, ‘weighing up their strengths and weaknesses’ and is about to propose to get married. His secretary tells him it sounds like his building a bridge. Every relationship needs some romance otherwise it has not spark, no joy, no vitality of love and life. A loving relationship needs to be much more than functionality but it also needs to be grounded in more than just the very flighty concepts of love portrayed in this film.

Love?

A whole song is dedicated to knowing how a woman knows a man loves her. However at the end of the song I’m not sure I came away much clearer. Disney has never been great in helping understand what love is. Philip dates Nancy for five years meets the Princess and falls in love in a matter of days. Isn’t that kind of thing the source of enormous hurt in the real world? Is Disney saying that you can end a long standing relationship because you feel like you have fallen in love with someone else? This is truly scary stuff.

Romance and Love

Romance is lovely but it’s not love. Love is a decision made by a person to put the interests of someone else before their own. Christ died for his enemies so that they could be forgiven. How much more then should we value the person whom we have married. If the romantic spark has been extinguished then get a match and some tinder and lovingly fan that romance back into life. But romance isn’t the bases a loving relationship. Don’t let your feelings hold your relationships to ransom. You can decide to love someone and to be romantic.

Love defined

Where this film failed to define love let’s see how God himself defines love:

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵ does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ⁸ Love never fails. 

Jesus Christ is Love

Read the Gospels in the New Testament and you will see that Jesus Christ is love, in his character, in his words and in his actions. If you want to be a more loving person then model your life on Christ.

Rating 3 stars

This was a diverting, fun and enchanting film.

Special thanks goes to 96FIVE radio station for gave me two free passes to see this Pre-Screening of Enchanted. Without a doubt this is my pick of films to see this Christmas with the family.