Enchanted, review - Telegraph The film opens in an animated kingdom, where the princess Giselle (a cross between Cinderella and Snow White) talks to animals, sings exquisitely, and passively longs to find a handsome prince. This sylvan setting, with soaring heavenly voices on the soundtrack, trilling bluebirds darting around Giselle, and a wistful song, True Love's Kiss, that belongs in a 19th-century operetta, is pure parody - a sly dig at Disney's musty conventions. Now the real story kicks in: can Giselle's innocence, charm and goodness survive in modern life? Her big test arrives in the shape of Robert (Patrick Dempsey), a sad-eyed single father and divorce lawyer who has seen enough human frailty and selfishness to have given up on happy endings. Tellingly, he discourages his young daughter from reading fairy-tales. Yet, almost against his better judgment, he gives Giselle a roof over her head. At this point, Enchanted threatens to evolve into a first-rate musical. A brilliantly choreographed number is staged in Central Park. There's more fun poked at Disney tropes: Giselle's call summons Manhattan's furred and feathered to descend en masse on Robert's heroically untidy apartment and sort it out. Yet these songs (by veterans Alan Menken and Stephen Schwarz) almost divert attention from the main story of Giselle's uneasy progress in New York. The cynical natives simply cannot work her out. "I don't know if you're kidding or being ironic," the exasperated Robert complains. "It's like you escaped from a Hallmark card, or something," Giselle is told. "Is that a bad thing?" she asks. This material could become saccharine without a truly deft touch, a quality included in Adams's broad repertoire. She can play both toughness and wide-eyed innocence, and has finely calibrated timing that could make her a great screen comedienne - up there with, say, Judy Holliday or with early-period Goldie Hawn. Whether or not that happens, hers is the star-making performance of this year. As for Enchanted, it's delightful, unalloyed fun. It wears its intelligence lightly, but strays into provocative territory: what the pioneering child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim called the uses of enchantment. Specifically - in the one area it has in common with Atonement - it even muses on the universal desire for happy endings. So, of course, did Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, another dazzling musical deconstruction of fairy-tales that surely influenced the creative forces behind Enchanted. It shows in the character of Edward (James Marsden), a dashing prince who follows Giselle from her cartoon kingdom. He is handsome, gallant, always ready to draw his sword - and impossibly dim. Into the Woods boasts two like him. But Enchanted is less acid and more concerned with goodness fighting its corner in a world dominated by commercialism and greed. We'll draw a veil over Disney's contribution to that state of affairs. Its final triumph, in a slightly contrived ending, suggests that even cartoon princesses can be empowered and strong rather than meek and passive. How neat a trick is that? The best description of Enchanted lies in its title.