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Let's face it, more often than not, there's no such thing as "happily ever after" in reality. Sure we read about them all the time in fairy tales, but that doesn't mean whatever happens in those books transcend into real life. However, in Disney's recent movie, Enchanted, we see what happens when fairy tales meet reality, and boy is it a humorous sight.

The movie first starts off as a cartoon with a princess, prince, and promises of happily ever after. Of course, in comes the evil witch who decides to destroy all their hopes of marrying each other and living "happily ever after" by sending the princess to the real world. The real movie only starts 10 minutes in, with princess Giselle (Amy Adams) emerging from a manhole in the middle of downtown New York City. Even in the real world, she continues to search for her prince Edward (James Marsden) at the "castle". It is when she starts talking to an advertisement (with a picture of a castle on it) that she bumps into Robert (Patrick Dempsey) by chance. He then brings her home and allows her to stay the night, and from then on they get into all sorts of sticky situations, mainly due to the fact that Giselle still believes that true love exists in the reality she's in.

Revealing any more about the movie would be a huge spoiler for anyone who's interested in it, and after watching it I think that includes everyone. First of all the premise of this movie is just so unique and fresh, no other movie before has thought about bringing fairy tale characters into real life. It is quite a sight to watch the prince run around New York City in an 18th century costume, slaying a "metallic beast" (a bus) by stabbing it in its side. Obviously, the plot of the movie is really unorthodox, and the twists are so unbelievable that this movie is more of a fairy tale set in real life. However it's probably because of this fact that the movie transcends all ages, making it the best family movie that's been released in quite some time. Kids will love seeing their fairy tale characters come to life and parents will be able to relate with how "happily ever after" seldom occurs in real life. Perhaps the best part of this movie is probably the fact that it tries to parody classic Disney works - the opening animation sequence is meant to resemble a typical Disney cartoon with a princess and prince singing with the birds and the bees, and all the other songs sung throughout the rest of the movie are typical childish songs that seem even more so when sung in real world situations.

The acting throughout the film is great obviously, Adams manages to pull off a stellar performance as a fairy tale princess, always beaming widely and always hopeful (and obviously always singing). Marsden does an equally good if not better job of playing the zippy prince, always hyperactive in his search for his fair maiden. Both Adams and Marsden have done an incredible job which will make you go "yeah, that's how a fairy tale character would act like in real life". In contrast, the film almost always gets boring everytime Dempsey starts talking, which is a good thing. He's meant to be the ordinary boring guy who has to let Giselle know there's no such thing as dreams coming through. He does a great job in directly contrasting the always hopeful Giselle by being the normal guy who's just bored of life.

All in all, this film will definitely stick around for quite some time with kids begging their parents to let them watch it over and over again. The romance and comedy in this film do such a great job of parodying fairy tales and cartoons that most people who have grown up reading Cinderella or Snow White will love to watch this film to get a kick out of it. I'll give you one last hint about the plot: In the end, all of them live ________ ever after. No prizes for filling in the blank correctly.

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