“Ella Enchanted” struggles to sustain an enchanting illusion while ribbing fairy-tale models and conventions in ways that resemble “Shrek” and “A Knight’s Tale” rather too complacently for comfort. It also harks back at least as far as “The Princess Bride,” while being conspicuously derivative.
There’s an eccentric casting link to the Rob Reiner movie: Cary Elwes, the swashbuckling hero in “Bride,” has matured (or regressed) into the effetely diabolical villain of “Ella.” He hams it up as a power-mad regent known to his unsuspecting nephew, Hugh Dancy’s Prince Char (short for Charmant), as Uncle Edgar.
Smitten with the title character, Anne Hathaway as a high-minded but magically thwarted maiden called Ella of Frell, the naive prince fails to appreciate his uncle’s treachery until the brink of coronation. With the aid of a makeshift alliance of humans, elves, ogres and giants, Ella attempts to save the realm from despotism and bigotry under Edgar and his factotum, a snobbish and mercenary digital python called Heston. (Presumably, someone connected with the production harbors an animus against Charlton Heston.)
In fact, Ella is burdened with a politically correct agenda that throbs like a sore thumb whenever allegorical points are being underlined. Her best friend looks Indian and is described as an Aorthian, evidently a minority scorned by privileged folk without a social conscience. That would include the heroine’s hostile new stepmother, Aunt Olga (Joanna Lumley), and a set of grotesque stepsisters.
Often technically grotesque, the movie fails to discover a scale that will juxtapose giants and smaller creatures in cleverly illustrated ways. It looks bogus when Ella and the prince, who become traveling companions at a certain point, blunder across a penal farm in which giants are supposed to be toiling submissively for the captors they dwarf. The trick shots fall short of the norms represented by “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” two generations ago.
Ella’s inside track with Char is a head start that rivals and ill-wishers try to counter by exploiting her curse. A thoughtless fairy called Lucinda (Vivica A. Fox) imposed a vow of obedience on the infant Ella, and she remains a prisoner to commands from any source as a young woman.
I am informed by a pair of literary consultants, my twin granddaughters, that the movie is scarcely faithful to its source, a popular juvenile novel of the same title by Gail Carson Levine. Indeed, I am urged to mention the infidelity in no uncertain terms to help prepare other devoted readers for a potential letdown.
Miss Hathaway, the gladdening discovery of “The Princess Diaries,” still has a salutary effect on me, but she faces an uphill battle against the slapstick clumsiness of director Tommy O’Haver and the pervasive garishness and flatness of the movie’s scenic design.
The young leads are responsible for the welcome notes of sincerity in the show. The buffoonery gets a rest during their first love scene, staged in front of a flaming fire at a giants’ dance club. Although the blaze looks capable of charring mere humans from a much greater distance, the performers suggest a rapport that dignifies the dopey back projection.
There’s reason to remain fond of their mutual fondness in subsequent love scenes. “Ella Enchanted” may allow Miss Hathaway to extend her appeal until she returns this summer in the sequel to “Princess Diaries.”
**
TITLE: “Ella Enchanted”
RATING: PG (Fleeting comic vulgarity and sexual innuendo)
CREDITS: Directed by Tommy O’Haver. Screenplay by Laurie Craig, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, based on the novel by Gail Carson Levine
RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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