Foker's DVD Choice (From Surrey Comet)

Foker's DVD Choice

12:23pm Wednesday 9th July 2008

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Foker's DVD Choice

Apologies for not blogging for a while. I’ve been in Germany for the past week, we went to visit our eldest daughter Sam.
She is currently appearing as Dinah and Ashley in ‘Starlight Express’ in Bochum.
Wow…what a show. They just celebrated the show’s 20th anniversary and the great Lord himself came to give it the red carpet treatment.
That’s Sam 3rd from the right in her Ashley costume. Yep! That’s Arlene Philips as well.
A bit self indulgent I know but hey! What the hell!

http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/_images/misc/Blog/sam400.jpg


Anyway, back to business. While staying in Sam’s apartment we watched a couple of DVDs and I thought I would share my views with you all.
Now these two movies are poles apart and couldn’t be more different.
The first one is Enchanted or to give it its German title Verwunscht (doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!) As nice as Germany is it doesn’t have a very pretty language. It kinda makes Enchanted sound like a swear word? The other movie is Superbad. More about that next time.

Enchanted http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/_images/misc/Blog/Enchantedposter.jpg

The trailer for this movie made it look quite lame and I wasn’t that fussed about watching it. But, and here’s a big but, I really enjoyed it.
What makes it so good is that it’s Disney taking the Mickey (sorry about the pun!) out of Disney. I guess the men in suits saw how Pixar’s Shrek took every typical Disney-esque stereotype and just tore it apart! Plus made a fortune in the process.

The film opens with a scene reminiscent from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty in the good old fashioned traditionally-drawn animation, a style not seen since 2004 when they decided to create all feature length cartoons as computer generated.
Our wannabe Princess, Giselle (Amy Adams) is the archetypal heroine, all sweetness and light, talks to the woodland animals (who talk back and help around the house…like you do) sings about True Love’s Kiss and dreams of her Prince Charming. I was racking my brains to think where I had seen Amy Adams before. She looked very familiar. It struck me at the end of the film! She was the sweet innocent student nurse who Leonardo DiCaprio took advantage of in Catch me if you can.

Back to the film.
Enter Prince Edward, no not the one from It’s a Royal Knock Out fame (and by the way a real life prince) but James Marsden in cartoon form.
He saves Giselle from a giant troll which was sent to kill Giselle by the wicked Queen’s sidekick Nathaniel (Timothy Spall).
The wicked Queen incidentally, is played brilliantly over the top by Susan Sarandon.
To cut a 'once upon a time’ short, the Queen is worried that if Giselle and her son Prince Edward marry then she would have to give up her thrown. So she pushes Giselle down a magical well that transports her to modern day New York where she pushes her way up through a manhole cover alone and in human form.
However, not all is lost! Giselle’s faithful companion Pip the squirrel dives into the magical well to rescue her and he too turns into…well um actually CGI form.
He is closely followed by Queenies henchman Nathaniel who turns into Timothy Spall form and is under instructions from her majesty to poison the almost-Princess to make certain that she never returns to Andalasia.
I forgot to tell you that this is the name of the fairybookland kingdom.
Giselle wanders through the streets of New York innocently approaching down and outs and vagrants in search of her way home.
She is rescued by a handsome passer-by Robert (Patrick Dempsey) who sees her from his cab with his young daughter Morgan ( Rachel Convey).
Giselle is trying to climb an advertising hording built to resemble a fairy style castle, when she stumbles and falls into the somewhat clumsy arms of Robert who by this time has raced over to save her from certain death.
Giselle is a big hit with Robert’s daughter and they take her home with them.
Then guess what? Surprise, surprise, Robert’s fiancée turns up and there is a total misunderstanding (with hilarious consequences!) especially as Giselle had to take off her torn Princess dress.
But thank goodness everything is sorted out. The Foker ‘Look out For’ moment is while walking in Central Park Giselle tells Robert that the way a man should tell a woman that he loves her is through a song.
Robert dismisses this as ludicrous and as Giselle starts to give him an example her song is picked up by a nearby group of buskers who start repeating her lyrics and the whole thing turns into a big Oliver-style musical number.
Nathaniel (the Queen's sidekick) is making a real hash of trying to get Giselle to eat the poison apple which leads the Queen to throw herself into the magic well and follow the cast into New York.
You know what they say? If you want a job done properly, do it yourself.
I won’t tell you anymore of the plot, just go and rent it out or buy it from Tesco’s.
By the way WB, thanks for your comments and no, I won’t be reviewing Edge of Love unfortunately.
However, I’m going to a preview of Disney’s next big US blockbuster hit ‘Wall-e’.
I’ve seen the posters for this film and is it just me or is WALL-E the long lost twin of Johnny-5 from Short Circuit?