rom infancy, Ella (Anne Hathaway) has been cursed by a "gift" given to her by Lucinda (Vivica A. Fox), the worst fairy in all of the Kingdoms: to obey any order given within earshot. By the time she grows to be a young woman, she learns how to partially control it, but when her stepmother (Joanna Lumley) and two stepsisters marry in to the family, she finds they can control her whether she likes it or not.
Before long, her two siblings are forcing her to be cruel, steal and generally misbehave, landing her in all sorts of trouble at the local Frell Galleria. Eventually, the independent-minded Ella decides that the only solution to her problem is to seek out Lucinda and beg her to take back her "gift."
Leaving home and traveling the countryside, she runs across an ambitious elf named Slannen (Aidan McArdle), who, like her, wants to change his station in life, and the dreamy Prince Charmont (Hugh Dancy), who is to ascend the throne as king in a matter of days. As Ella's quest continues, she realizes that the only way to find true happiness is to find Lucinda and break herself free of this lifelong curse. The question is, will those who know of her "gift" help her escape it, or use it for their own evil designs?
Definitely the day the magic died
Ella Enchanted follows in the footsteps of Shrek, Harry Potter and Moulin Rouge as a film that references such a breadth of influences that one can hardly nail down a point of origin, feeling at once like something old and familiar and something daring and new. At the same time, its pleasures are in such short supply amid the collage of pop-cultural cues that the film never truly exists as anything other than a derivative commercial exercise, and fails to appeal to anyone whose mindset has evolved past that of a 12-year-old girl.
The opening song is a milquetoast cover of Electric Light Orchestra's "Strange Magic" (whose rights were likely sold unbeknownst to Jeff Lynne), evoking the feeling that Ella might have been an irreverent send-up of both musicals and fairy tales, but the story quickly falls into predictable, kiddie-friendly beats. Director Tommy O'Haver (Get Over It) drops a poorly timed pee joke in the first five minutes, and then subsequently aims for the lowest common comedic denominator with lackluster jokes and special effects that are neither professional nor intentionally bad enough to work for anyone but a complete novice to this or any other cinematic world.
Few actresses ascended into A-list status as quickly as teen star Anne Hathaway, who wowed audiences in 2000's The Princess Diaries and took her position as the Next Julia Roberts. What she shares with Roberts is a boundless charisma and fresh-scrubbed enthusiasm to carry even mediocre pictures to box-office glory; what she has yet to prove is whether she can actually deliver more than two or three facial expressions, much less in a movie targeted at someone over the age of 10.
Overall, the film feels too disjointed to work for either kids or adults, spending too much time on politics that will likely go over the heads of youngsters, then leapfrogging back to the safety of scatological humor to avoid any truly deep thinking. Though its multicultural cast provides a welcome change from the homogeneous color schemes of most fantasy/period pieces, Ella Enchanted's schizophrenic approach to storytelling just can't sustain the weight of its narrative and musical conceits, leaving the audience confused—and, worse, bored—as the film grinds to its inevitable conclusion.
