'Enchanted' is a kinder, sweeter fairy-tale spoof

The animated prologue to the live action "Enchanted," a musical fairy tale about the beautiful princess Giselle waiting for her prince, condenses decades of Disney conventions and tropes into a single concentrated form. The parody is so spot-on it could pass for the real thing.

Amy Adams carries on that conviction into the flesh-and-blood Giselle when she falls out of her fantasy world and into New York's Times Square. Adams doesn't ridicule Giselle's naivete and infectious cockeyed optimism, she embraces it without a trace of irony, and it's infectious.

A stranger in a strange land, Giselle glides through urban bustle and predatory street life with all the cheer and sparkle of an animated heroine in her fantasy world. When she breaks into song, bystanders leap into spontaneous dance numbers and sewer rats and cockroaches arrive to help with the housework.

Patrick Dempsey is the resistant attorney and single dad who reluctantly takes the dizzy beauty into his New York apartment. He's a man whose careful life and long engagement has all the romance of a business negotiation. Giselle fills his rational world with the fairy dust of storybook fantasy and happy endings.

Dempsey is rather colorless next to Adams and James Marsden (who brings impeccable manners to the comic arrogance of the cheerfully cocky Prince Edward). With almost nothing to work with in the wicked queen role, Susan Sarandon cackles and gestures flamboyantly, but she has more fun with it than we do.

"Enchanted" isn't a goofy, broad spoof in the "Ella Enchanted" vein, but a genial embrace of dreams and childlike innocence in the material world. Given the possibilities it's not particularly inventive, but it is nice to see a comedy so affectionate with the conventions it spoofs.