I live under a rock.
I would like to go see this movie but haven’t heard anything about it. And is it kid friendly enough to allow me to take my 4 & 6 year old?
Any dopers seen it?
Good?
Bad?
Stupid?
Eh?
Would rather poke your eyes out with a rusty knife?
If you are so inclined.
Another good site, if you don’t like spoilers is Grading the Movies, it also gives tips on how to talk to your kids about themes in the movie (if so inclined). The guy who writes these is often on our noon news to talk about the new movies.
Ella Enchanted is here
I went to see Ella Enchanted with my six year old daughter. She loved it; I thought it was okay. There’s nothing terribly inappropriate, at least by my standards. No swearing, no real violence, no sexual innuendoes to speak of.
Thanks for the input and links. I have the book here, so maybe I crack it open - even though the spoiler said it wasn’t anything like the book except the curse and characters.
The book is wonderful – I just read it for a project on Cinderella stories I did for my women’s lit course. It’s funny, charming, and sweet, but without making Ella into an archetype. The prince is a great character too, if a little two-dimensional. He’s more of a prop, really, than a fully developed character – used to advance the plot more than anything. But it is a children’s book after all, so I might be asking for too much there.
It’s a great book for girls who are at the YA books stage in their reading. If anything, it kicks Disney’s Cinderella clear out of the water. (I’ll not latch onto why the Disney princesses aren’t the bestest role models for children.)
Having read the The Movie Spoiler entry for the movie, I just have to say that I’m rather ticked off that they’ve turned it into a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson version of the book, which would have made a lovely movie with the plot as is. Harrumph!
Well I’ve read the book and was immediately pissed off at the movie commercials because they’ve really “hollywood-ized” a great novel. It looks like it has all sorts of stupid gimmicks and crap, which just means that everyone is going to think the book is of the same vein.
But hell, maybe kids will like it… kids are stupid after all.
I saw it. Decent, but not great. Shoud be appropriate for any age group. On the plus side, they never descended into toilet humor just to crank up appeal among kids. Also, they didn’t insist on sticking exactly to the books, and added some more entertaining scenes while cutting the most tedious parts of the book. However, for an adult there’s still not all that much that’s really funny, and the musical numbers are a wee bit disappointing.
I saw it this past weekend, took my date and her 10 year old son tagging along. The movie we had planned to see was cancelled and ‘Ella’ was the only other option. So I went in with the absolute LOWEST possible expectations, certain that I would be bored to tears and would find the whole thing sachrymose and insipid and a complete waste of time.
Never have I been so pleasantly surprised. I probably wouldn’t have been as pleased with it if I had expected anything of merit whatsoever, but I must say that I quite enjoyed it. Yes, it is a kids’ movie, and it’s not going to win any attention from the arthouses or academia, but it was quite entertaining and fun.
Very appropriate for children, though a 4 year old would probably have a hard time sitting through the whole thing. I didn’t notice any inappropriate language; the only nudity was the exposed upper butt-cracks of the ogres (who dressed like plumbers); the violence was very mild–no blood or gore, just a little swordplay and one slightly tense moment with a poised dagger.
The best thing about the movie was the enchanting Anne Hathaway, who is quite beautiful and very high on the cute scale.
The movie’s basically a yoking-together of ‘cinderella’ and ‘hamlet’, with added cuteness and fluff. And the arch-villain is played by the same actor who has the romantic lead in ‘Princess Bride’. Actually, the movie is sort of along the lines of Princess Bride, in tone, humor, and sappiness, with occasional witty lines and generally entertaining and focused on sending you out with a ‘feel-good’ moment.
I pretty much ditto what Pablito said. I went with low expectations- I am SO tired of the Hillary Duff/Olsens/LindseyLohan pre-teen chick flicks I could gag (I have a 10 year old girl, what do I expect?), but it was decent. She has read the book and said it was quite faithful. I thought it cutish. I loved Cary Elwes as the stereotypical evil character (I have had a long term crush on the man, goofy ears and all). I don’t think a 4 year old would be able to sit through it, though.
The one blech moment was the song at the end. Abba, was it? Oy.
It’s appropriate for kids. However, in my 14-year-old daughter’s opinion, it’s a travesty of the book. She’s loved the book forever, and she’s thoroughly disgusted by the liberties taken with the story.
It’s a good, amusing, entertaining fluff movie. Nothing inappropriate that you couldn’t take kids to: no swearing, nudity, sex, and little violence (and what there is in the way of violence is higly stylized fantasy swordplay and a few conks over the head – no blood and gore).
It’s a medieval fantasy set in the 1970’s (judging from the styles and the music). It’s Cinderella meets women’s lib meets E!'s Hollywood True Stories (“the story behind Ella…”). It has an incompetent fairy godmother, and elf who wants to be a lawyer, gentle giants, blue ogres, red ninja guards, a cross-species romance, and a talking snake. (Every story ought to have a talking snake, no?) It’s Shrek, in live acting, without the donkey.
The acting is neither excellent and Shakespearean nor awful and dull – it’s just enough to get the story across. It’s got a moral, but that’s to be expected from the genre, and they don’t try to spend too much time on it. It has the requisite good vs. evil story, the good guys win in the end (and that’s not even a spoiler), and everyone ends happily ever after. Plus, it has Eric Idle narrating, and what more could you ask for?
It’s not going to win any Oscars, I don’t think, but it’s a good solid entertaining movie for a dull afternoon. Go.
(And it was an Elton John song, not Abba.)
Thanks. I blanked it out, I just remembered it was 70’s bubblegum.
I took my daughters to see the movie, since they all loved the book. They absolutely hated the movie, though. “Stupid, stupid, stupid” was all they could say. This surprised me, as I was mildly entertained by the whole thing, very much like “The Princess Bride”. Minnie Driver as the incompetent fairy-godmother was wonderful. By changing the story, I believe the producers were aiming for a “Shrek”-type wackiness. Missed the mark on that one, but still fun. If your children are not too enamored with the book, this should be a fun matinee.
A correction to my post above, before anyone else calls me on it. Minnie was wonderful as the befuddled House Fairy, not the fairy godmother whose performance was way over the top for my tastes.
Damn! House Fairies/Fairy Godmothers, Ogres/Trolls, Orcs/Dwarves, Sauraman/Sauron, Vulcans/Romulans. I just cannot keep my fantasy creatures straight!