Fred, I find your ENCHANTED comments very interesting. I hadn't thought about it quite like that, but I agree that that message came across.
Spoiler Warning: ENCHANTED NEGATIVE COMMENTS FOLLOW!
My reactions are a bit of a jumble right now. I'll try to sort them out. Many are personal preferences.
Re love stories. I'm a bit tired of the old cliche of love conquers all. That said, I enjoy quirky stories of love, eg Minette Walters' THE ICE HOUSE. At times, ENCHANTED seemed to be saying that love isn't like the fairy tales, but then it seemed to revert back to fairy-taleness. It was obvious that the divorce lawyer would end up with Amy Adams, but why? She was just waaay too much of an air-head for me. See? You can get away with being an air-head in fantasies, but not in live action--not for me, anyway. I guess this is my primary complaint about the film. There are things you can do sucessfully in animation/fantasy, that just don't work otherwise. A friend of mine from the theatre arts dept at UCLA, specifically puppetry, once commented that you can have violence in puppet shows and the kids are fine with it, but that same violence would be gratuitous and unsettling in another arena. I'm fine with the mix of animation and non-animation in concept, but for me it just didn't work well here.
