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Ella Enchanted Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG (for some crude humor and language) Theater release: April 09, 2004 by Miramax Directed by: Tommy O'Haver Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes Cast: Anne Hathaway (Ella), Hugh Dancy (Prince Charmont), Cary Elwes (Prince Regent Edgar), Minnie Driver (Mandy), Vivica A. Fox (Fairy Lucinda), Parminder K. Nagra (Areida), Eric Idle (Narrator) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

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Several years ago, a prominent Hollywood production company tried to develop a movie based on C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The famed children's tale had been adapted for television a few times before, but Narnia fans like me were still waiting with high hopes for the definitive film treatment of Lewis's story So imagine our shock, indeed our outrage, when Lewis's step-son, Douglas Gresham, reported that the screenplay he had seen had introduced all sorts of modern, and distinctly non-Lewisian, elements to the story. Cheeseburgers had replaced Turkish delight, and the Allied Leopards of Narnia had formed their own trade union.

Anne Hathaway, apparently enchanted

That movie, thankfully, was never made; the film rights reverted to the Lewis estate, which has since permitted an entirely different company to adapt the story. But I was reminded of that near-catastrophe while watching Ella Enchanted, Tommy O'Haver's campy adaptation of Gail Carson Levine's charming fairy tale about a girl who is cursed with the gift of perfect obedience. The film keeps the book's interesting premise—ever since a fairy visited her home when she was a baby, Ella (The Princess Diaries' Anne Hathaway) simply cannot refuse to do what anybody tells her to do—as well as some character names and a few basic plot points, but it changes everything else.

Levine's book makes just enough nods to existing fairy tales to qualify as "post-modern," in some sense of the word; the basic tale, which includes wicked stepsisters, glass slippers and the like, is a revision of the Cinderella story, and the characters even remark that tales like The Shoemaker and the Elves perpetuate false stereotypes. (Elves in the real world aren't that short!) But that's about as far as that goes.

On the other hand, the film, written by Laurie Craig (Paulie) and Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith (Legally Blonde), is rife with creative anachronisms; what The Flintstones was to the prehistoric age, Ella Enchanted is to the Middle Ages. Thus Ella's giddy stepsisters put hand-drawn pin-ups of the Prince on their bedroom walls and read Medieval Teen, while the coaches are painted like taxi cabs and the village market looks like an open-air shopping mall, complete with a wooden, hand-cranked escalator.

Donna Dent, Minnie Driver and Vivica A. Fox

And then there is the dialogue, which is chock full of contemporary jargon. When Ella is still quite young, a girl taunts her and says, "Bite me!" Ella, of course, takes this literally and replies with her teeth. Asked to take back the "gift" of obedience that she has bestowed on Ella, the fairy Lucinda (Vivica A. Fox) says, "I have a no-return policy." Rescued from some bigoted bullies in the woods, the elf Slannen (Aidan McArdle) says, "I'm going to need so much therapy after this." After Ella tells Prince Charmont (Hugh Dancy) a few things about her obsessive, stalking stepsister Hattie (Lucy Punch), the Prince says, "Now I know what name to put on the restraining order." And so on.

In fairness, there can be a place for this sort of thing. The "panto"—short for pantomime, which takes frequent jabs at local politics and pop culture—is an established part of the British theatrical tradition, and I could not help but laugh when Slannen, who wants to be a lawyer, cries out, "If the gauntlet doesn't fit, you must acquit!" If I had known nothing about the book, I might have enjoyed the film as a purely silly twist on classic fairy tales, not unlike The Princess Bride. Indeed, the star of that film, Cary Elwes, appears here as a scheming villain with designs on the Prince's crown; his gleefully over-the-top mannerisms would be right at home in a panto. And Anne Hathaway is simply a joy to watch; she is one of those rare radiant actresses who is equally at ease conveying the tragedy of losing a friend, the joy of finding new love, and the sheer physical absurdity of springing down a castle corridor just because someone told her to "hop to it."

But this film is based on a book, and the story loses a great deal in the translation. For one thing, the book's characters expressed a genuine curiosity in the ways of other cultures, a curiosity that is lost in the film's constant pop allusions. Take Ella's visit to the land of the giants. In the book, Ella attends a wedding between two giants which includes a ritual pantomime expressing their desire to live together, raise a family together, and ultimately die together. But the film turns the wedding party into a mere karaoke night, as Ella belts out a cover of Queen's Somebody to Love and modulates her performance to suit the demands of her audience ("A little more soul!" cries one giant).

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