Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Ella Enchanted Blu-ray Movie Review

Where's Shrek when you really need him?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 16, 2012

While there is a giant ogre wreaking havoc in Ella Enchanted, it’s the memory of another ogre that is far more problematic for the film. Ella Enchanted wants to be a post-modern send up of fairy tales, replete with ironic uses of pop songs and a contemporary patois that colors the supposedly “once upon a time” setting. Unfortunately that very approach had been offered a few years before Ella Enchanted hit the big screen, in the first Shrek film. Shrek itself harkened back to the old Fractured Fairy Tales that were a regular recurring element of the classic Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, wiseacre send ups of stories most of us had grown up with and knew like the veritable backs of our hands. But Shrek also took on popular culture and the whole framework of fairy tales, and that very same attack is fostered by Ella Enchanted, to much less effective results. Shrek’s source novel by William Steig first appeared in 1990, while Ella Enchanted’s source novel came out in 1997, and while the two are manifestly different in several key elements, they share a certain spirit that can’t be easily dismissed. If the Shrek film adaptation took a broad satiric stroke toward all manner of things, from fairy tale tropes to Walt Disney’s multimedia empire, Ella Enchanted attempts to keep things a bit more focused, skewing the Cinderella story with a few “new and improved” fanciful touches. Both Shrek and Ella Enchanted promote a kind of cheeky humor, though Shrek is the much more smartly written enterprise and perhaps because the film is animated it finds its satiric voice much more easily than Ella’s live action is ever able to.

Ella Enchanted’s best plot conceit, and the one that is central the film’s stab at innovation, comes early in the film when baby Ella is born in the fairy tale town of Frell. Her house comes replete with its own fairy, Mandy (Minnie Driver, largely wasted in a throwaway role), but soon a more dastardly fairy shows up. While Lucinda (Vivica A. Fox) isn’t exactly evil (something that might have given this film a little punch), she’s at least underhanded and when baby Ella starts crying, Lucinda decides to “reward” the cranky little one with the gift of obedience, meaning that Ella will need to do whatever she’s told. This addition to the Cinderella mythos is played for a few sporadic laughs as the girl grows up, with little vignettes that include her mother telling her to hurry up and practice her mandolin, which of course sends Ella into a high speed race to her instrument and then some forced bowing (which begs the question: why is this mandolin being bowed, for heaven’s sake?).

Things get ostensibly more serious after Ella’s mother dies, and her father marries a repulsive harridan (Joanna Lumley, attempting to inject a little humor into the proceedings) with two equally repulsive daughters. Ella’s father leaves on a business trip (he’s evidently a traveling salesman), leaving Ella to fend for herself, something that becomes problematic when the smarter (a decidedly relative term) of her two stepsisters figures out that Ella (played as a young adult by Anne Hathaway) has to obey commands and gets the young girl into trouble. Ella has had enough and enlists Mandy’s aid in trying to track down Lucinda to get the horrible curse of obedience lifted.

A simultaneously unfolding plot arc sees Prince Char (Hugh Dancy) about to assume the throne of this mythical storybook kingdom. Char is a heartthrob, and while Ella’s stepsisters have serious crushes on him, Char and Ella meet cute outside of Frell one day when Char is attempting to evade a tussle of frenetic teen girls out to track him down. In true romantic comedy (if not fairy tale) fashion, it’s hardly love at first sight—at least for Ella, who can’t stand the fact that Char seems to assume he’s irresistible. Can true love be far behind?

Ella’s quest to track down Lucinda takes up the bulk of the second act, and she’s introduced to a number of supporting characters including a helpful elf named Slannen (Aidan McArdle). Ella is accompanied by a magical book that belongs to Mandy that hold the disembodied head of Mandy’s boyfriend (a running gag has Mandy as a kind of younger version of Bewitched’s Aunt Clara, a supposedly magical being whose spells never quite come out right, hence the predicament of her paramour). The book reveals that Lucinda is most likely in a land populated by giants, so Ella, Slannen and the book head off, soon joined by Char himself, who of course shows up at one point when Ella is about to be boiled alive by some nasty ogres (who just as predictably turn out not to be nasty).

As this brief précis probably makes clear, Ella Enchanted is pretty by the numbers storytelling. It’s amiable enough, and Hathaway is certainly a winning presence, but the writing is about at the level of a very special Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode. It has very little flash or panache, something that only makes the film’s rather nice candy colored production design seem all the more hollow by comparison. Ella Enchanted requires a much sharper satiric edge than, say, elves singing “Let Me Entertain You” to really capture the insouciance the film so ardently wants to achieve.

The film is too banal to really ever connect with a jaded adult audience (something that Shrek managed to do quite easily). Instead this is probably seen as acceptable if bland family fare that will probably, well, enchant younger viewers with some of its sillier aspects even if it never quite manages to work up the hilarity it seems to think it’s delivering.

Ella Enchanted Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ella Enchanted is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This high definition presentation offers gorgeously robust and well saturated colors, but it's a strangely soft looking transfer a lot of the time, especially with regard to some of the special effects shots, which almost seem to ooze or melt, rather than pop with incredible vigor and precision. That said, a lot of the film looks fantastic, including the nice CGI snake, Heston, and close-ups reveal abundant fine object detail. Contrast is very strong and helps the film to traverse the different territories, which vary from brightly lit exteriors to shadowy interiors, with ease. The film's boisterous palette is its best visual asset, and this Blu-ray offers the brilliant colors with very pleasing consistency.

Ella Enchanted Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ella Enchanted's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix really fills the surrounds when the film's ubiquitous source cues spring into action. The film could almost qualify as a quasi-musical, with several big production numbers dotting the landscape, and those all sound very nicely full and nuanced. The film is also awash in fun foley effects, with, for example, Lucinda's crazy entrances offering huge whooshing panning effects that clearly fly across the sound field. Dialogue is very cleanly presented and the film's whimsical underscore also sounds just fine. Fidelity is top notch throughout the film, and there's rather wide dynamic range as well.

Ella Enchanted Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Feature Commentary with Director Tommy O'Haver and Actors Anne Hathaway and Hugh Dancy. This is a pleasant commentary which gets into some of the nuts and bolts of the filmmaking, including some of the convoluted special effects shots. It's not overly technical and a bit chatty at times, but Hathaway fans especially should get a kick out of it.


• Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary with Director Tommy O'Haver and Actor Hugh Dancy (SD; 9:37)


• Extended Scenes with Optional Commentary with Director Tommy O'Haver and Actor Hugh Dancy (HD; 5:22)


• The Magical World of Ella Enchanted (SD; 28:33) is a fairly typical EPK-fest with interviews and scenes from the film. I'm assuming this aired as a television special when the film was about to be released.


• Ella Enchanted Red Carpet Premiere Special (SD; 23:14) actually starts exactly the same way that The Magical World of 'Ella Enchanted' does, and then moves on to some pre-taped interview segments and film clips interspersed with red carpet interviews.


• Music Video "It's Not Just Make Believe" Performed by Kari Kimmel (SD; 3:07)

Ella Enchanted Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ella Enchanted simply never quite gets to its own happily ever after, at least with regard to its writing, which is far too predictable and never sharply satirical enough to really find its mark. That said, there's nothing egregiously horrible about the film, either. It's filled with pleasant enough performances, it's well staged and certainly extremely colorful. But it never really delivers the sort of hilariously knowing humor that Shrek did, and a lot of the film just feels lethargic and bloated. Hathaway fans will no doubt be very pleased with this Blu-ray's nice looking video and extremely well done audio. Others may want to rent this title first. Just don't watch it in a double feature with Shrek.