Enchanted

Once upon a time, an animated maiden long popular with woodland creatures fell in love with a handsome prince in puffy sleeves. They met after an incident with a troll and sang a duet called True Love's Kiss, preparing to marry the next day.

It all might have gone off like a dream had a certain evil queen-slash-wicked-stepmother not shoved her down a well. The maiden didn't die; she simply re-emerged in 21st-century New York City, specifically a manhole near the Mama Mia! banner in Times Square. Then she almost got creamed by oncoming traffic.

That's the gimmick behind Enchanted, a gently meta fairy tale that pokes fun at Disney's animated classics, just never too hard to hurt. The Mouse will only mock itself so far. But this is a small charmer of a family movie - no modern masterwork, a bit too reminiscent of other fish-out-of-water romances (e.g., Splash), yet airy and fluffy and humorous enough to throw a few sparks of its own enchantment.

The first is a handful of tunes by the celebrated songwriting duo of Alan Mencken and Stephen Schwartz, who parody the swoopy anthems and sweetie-pie ballads of typical Disney standards, including some of their own. The opening sequence, set in the cartoon land of Andalasia, is meant to look and sound like Cinderella or Snow White or Beauty and the Beast, or any hybrid combo involving magic spells and starry romance.

And when the young lady Giselle (a superlatively flaky Amy Adams) ventures forth into the real city, meeting a real lawyer named Robert (a superlatively bland Patrick Dempsey) with a real daughter named Morgan (Rachel Covey) in a real cluttered apartment, the resulting collisions of fairy land and material world are touched with spoofy ingenuity. Her approach to domestic hygiene (recalling Ratatouille, a Disney/Pixar film) delights and disgusts. The film's splashy production number in Central Park does the same, minus the disgust, and all scenes involving a pantomiming anthropomorphic chipmunk are good, zippy fun.

Zippiest of all is the transported Prince himself - a witless but earnest fop who arrives, puffy sleeves intact, in the person of X-Man James Marsden. Marsden proved he could sing in Hairspray. Here he proves he can mug with the best of them, ripping off broad physical comedy and prissy hammy mannerisms with flat-out killer timing.

The Prince is such a blast to watch, so joyously inane, that he makes Dempsey's lawyer seem like the cartoon cutout: gloomy, underplayed, resigned to his role as straight man and total bummer. It's his job to tell everyone else what fools they are to believe in ``this dreams-come-true nonsense.'' Disney veteran Kevin Lima (Tarzan, 102 Dalmations) directs easily and breezily most of the time, but the movie cracks a gigantic yawn whenever Robert opens his mouth to speak. And the plot loses some of its comic fizz when the Evil Queen (Susan Sarandon, metallic headgear and all) elbows her way into the action, though I suppose she had to. Wicked stepmothers will out.

Everything droops near the close. Giselle's transformation to modern gal relies too much on shopping, and musical nitpickers (me, for instance) might wish that a climactic ballroom ``waltz'' had actually been in three-four time. The ending is entirely pre-packaged and foreordained, and if you can't predict what happens, you don't know your poison apples from your singing princesses. I'll give you a hint, though: They all live ever after. Guess which adverb applies.

amy.biancolli@chron.com