Lost in Adaptation: Ella Enchanted

Terrence compares the 1997 novel Ella Enchanted with its 2004 film adaptation.

Intro
Terrence: But *why*?!

The Dom: Because *I* need a break and *you* need to earn your keep around here, plus this is *your* area of expertise.

Terrence: But it's got nothing to do with *my* kind of magic; the rules are completely different.

The Dom: Do the review, or find another place to crash.

(The Dom walks off-screen, while Terrence mutters angrily to himself)

Terrence: Hello, Muggles! If you're not sure who I am, I have a very nice playlist of videos to recommend *to* you -- though the short version of the story is, my name is Terrence, I was in Ravenclaw house, and I am awesome in ways you didn't even know existed.

Right! Now that *that's* out of the way, let's talk about Ella Enchanted, shall we?

Poll
People Asked: 108

Saw the Film: 54

Read the Book: 27

Terrence: You know, I rather suspect The Dom is going to regret delegating this particular adaptation *to* me because he's been waiting for almost two years to use this clause again -- that's right, Ella Enchanted is Ella Enchanted in name only. In case you missed the last time this was invoked, it basically means the film is so different from the book, there really isn't much point in doing the usual direct comparison as, after a certain point, you're kind of dealing with apples and oranges -- that's not to say there is absolutely *zero* of the book in the film, as sometimes, the *basic* setup of the story is kept; but they still diverge past recognition. So, instead, I'm simply going to describe both subjects *individually* and let the *differences* speak for themselves. Let's see, the last time The Dom did this, he did the *film* first; so let's start with the book this time. Oh, and obviously, spoiler warning; this is actually quite a good book, so if you haven't yet, I would actually *recommend* reading it for yourself before listening to *me* dissect it -- you have been warned.

The Book
Terrence: Ella lives in the magical kingdom of Kyrria, a kingdom that is home to humans, elves, gnomes, ogres, and giants, amongst others. On the day of her birth, she is visited by a rather...unusual fairy by the name of Lucinda. Most fairies in this world are fairly grounded in reality; but Lucinda is possibly a little bit too in love with old stories about her people, so she believes it's important for her to use her magic to grant people gifts on their birthdays and weddings. The problem is, her grasp on reality is so tenuous, her "gifts" tend to be really, really terrible for the people receiving them -- case in point, she "gifts" Ella with the virtue of obedience, thinking it would make her the perfect child; Ella can never disobey a direct order given to her without experiencing *terrible* headaches and dizziness. Ella's mother and fairy godmother -- who, like most fairies, doesn't use powerful magic because of the terrible *consequences* -- objects, but Lucinda is too stubborn to listen.

As Ella grows up, the curse becomes more and more of a problem for her. Her father has no idea because, quite frankly, he doesn't give any kind of a shit about his family; he's a money-obsessed merchant and con artist who is hardly ever home with them at their vast estate -- it's generally accepted that he only courted her mother in the first place because he wanted to social climb to the aristocracy, and she fell for his fake affections. Ella's mother does her best to protect her daughter from people who would take advantage of her *curse*, forbidding her from ever telling anyone about it; but unfortunately, she falls ill and dies just as Ella is turning 15. Understandably despondent about her mother's death and her curse, Ella asks her friend and family cook -- a large, homely woman by the name of Mandy -- if she knows who her fairy godmother is in the hopes that she can help her lift it; Mandy reveals that *she* is, in fact, her fairy godmother, but she cannot. She also tells Ella that she herself has a small amount of fairy blood in her and, as a result, will have freakishly small feet for her entire life. (shrugs his shoulders)

Many of the kingdom's nobility attend the funeral, including the prince Charmont, who tries to comfort her and offers her friendship. Over the next couple of days, they hit it off big time because he is charming and kind, and she is intelligent and witty and can make him laugh all the time. She also meets a noblewoman by the name of Dame Olga and her two rather rude and bratty daughters named Hattie and Olive. Hattie is greedy, vain, selfish, and manipulative; and Olive appears to be extremely dimwitted -- I mean, she's *also* obsessed with money; but I got the impression she was just doing it because she was *told* it was important by her sister and mother. Ella dislikes them, but she also feels just a little bit sorry for them because she can see how their mother's poor upbringing led to them being terrible people -- that's not to say that Dame Olga was completely terrible *either*, but it was just a combination of neglect and leading by poor example.

Ella and the prince -- who tells her to call him "Char" because all his closest friends do -- stay in touch and become closer and closer. Char really does seem like a genuinely cool guy because he's committed to doing *everything* in his power to becoming the wisest, bravest king he can be someday. Alas, Ella's father decides to send her away to finishing school to learn to be more ladylike after she *accidentally* breaks a bunch of his shit. To try to cheer her up, Mandy gives her a magic book of fairy tales -- which, in addition to *stories*, shows her all sorts of unusual things, like other people's letters and journal entries. To her dismay, Ella finds out that she's going to the same school as Hattie and Olive; and, to make matters worse, Hattie has figured out that Ella cannot refuse an *order*, even if she doesn't know why. She forces Ella to give her her mother's necklace -- one of the last things she has to remember her by -- *and* pretty much tries to make her her servant around school; it culminates with her demanding that she end her budding friendship with another girl simply because she was *foreign* and not very rich.

Deeply depressed, Ella sees in her book that her *father* is attending a giant's wedding some ways to the north of the kingdom in the hopes of making contact with some fairies there. Ella realizes that this would be a *prime* place for Lucinda to show up again and resolves to *travel* there to *beg* her to remove the curse. Her journey starts out well, but she quickly runs out of food and starts to starve to death; fortunately, she runs into a village of elves, who take her in. The elves are a deeply *spiritual* people with a unique set of values and ideals; they do rather *interesting* things like refuse countless offers of riches for their delicate artwork, but then give it away for *free* if someone shows a true appreciation for it -- I have to confess, they don't actually have a *huge* impact on the story; I just...(sighs) I want you to remember that dignity and grace when we get to the film, okay?

Things once again take a turn for the worse for Ella pretty much right after she leaves the elves because she wakes up one morning surrounded by eight massive ogres. Ogres are one of the few irredeemably evil creatures in this world, as they have an insatiable hunger for human *flesh* and magical powers that make it quite easy for them to get it. You see, when an ogre looks at you, a mystic force tells them *exactly* what your weaknesses are; and their voices are hypnotic, sounding so soothing and persuasive that if you listen to them for too long, you fall into a trance and don't even realize they're *eating* you until it's too late -- I mean, it's basically the voice from Dune, if you're more familiar with that. Of course, they don't *need* to use that power on Ella because they instantly know that *she* must obey them regardless; they tell her not to run away, then decide to take her with them until they can find some more people to eat *with* her, as there isn't enough of her to go around and they can't stop arguing over who gets which bit.

After a day or so, Ella figures she has nothing to lose, so attempts to use the ogres' own powers against them; speaking in their language -- because she has an *incredible* gift as a linguist -- and doing her best impression of an ogre's voice, she tells them to all go to sleep -- and, possibly because of her *fairy* blood, it works. Unfortunately, the curse *still* won't let her run away; so her only option is to wait around for them to wake up and eat her. Fortunately, Prince Char turns up at that exact moment with a group of knights; they try to *bind* the ogres, but they wake up and start a fight. Having the clear advantage in size and numbers, the ogres *quickly* get the upper hand; but Ella manages to subdue them using her voice long enough for the knights to finish the job. Char unknowingly countermands the previous order, meaning she can now leave; and sends one of his knights to escort her to the giants' wedding before proceeding on his way to patrol the border.

Now, *giants* in this story are actually quite interesting -- I guess because they're so big and powerful, *nothing* really presents a threat to them; so they aren't afraid of anything and, as a result, are very friendly and a little obsessed with making visitors welcome. After being invited in, Ella avoids her father and searches for Lucinda; she *finds* her by watching everyone's feet for the freakishly small ones. Lucinda is working her usual disruption by giving the giants getting married the gift of inseparability, meaning they can literally never be apart for the rest of their entire lives! Ella overhears some other fairies trying to explain to her how that's going to ruin their *marriage* pretty fast; but as usual, she doesn't listen. Just before Ella can approach her, she *also* overhears them mention that Lucinda has a nasty habit of turning people who complain about her gifts into squirrels, believing that squirrels live happy, carefree lives- (Dug from Up appears on-screen) No! No. Go away. (Dug moves back off-screen) Good dog.

Changing tactics quickly, Ella pretends that she's actually looking for a gift of self-assertiveness in the hopes that Lucinda would have to remove the *old* one to give her the new one; the meeting backfires terribly because Lucinda still thinks that obedience is a really, really *good* thing and tells Ella she should be super happy about having it -- Ella, of course, has to obey. Now freakishly *happy* about being cursed, Ella finds her father and tells him about running away from school. He doesn't really care and tells her that he's just been tracked down by a bunch of people he scammed and lost all of their money; he tells her that she's going to have to marry a rich old man to restore the family's wealth -- Ella is *super* happy to hear this because, well, she has no choice.

Now, the next bit of the story is a little creepy because her father basically uses magical drugs on his 15-year-old *daughter* to get her to feel attraction for this middle-aged aristocrat and flirt with him all evening. I mean, it's set in a pseudo-medieval period, so that sort of thing wouldn't have been that *uncommon*; and the story does *portray* him as being a massive *douchebag* -- but, you know, still...ewww. Mandy eventually figures out that Ella is so happy because she's been *ordered* to be and countermands it for her; Ella becomes instantly *opposed* to the idea of marrying to satisfy her father's debts -- but, *fortunately*, even though his plan worked and the nobleman *did* ask for her hand in marriage, he also admitted to not being as rich as expected; so her father turned *down* his request. Realizing he's out of options, her father decides he's going to have to marry a wealthy person *himself*; unfortunately, he chooses Dame Olga, meaning she, Hattie, and Olive are now Ella's family.

Char attends the wedding, and they really hit it off again; there's *serious* chemistry between these two. Unfortunately, he says he has to leave for an entire year because his father is sending him to a royal court in foreign lands to learn diplomacy. Char gives Ella a gift -- it's a pair of shoes he's had custom-made for her small feet; they're made out of a type of hardened glass that has a slight amount of give in it so they can be worn comfortably.

Right after the wedding, Dame Olga is *shocked* and *hurt* to discover that her husband only married her for her money. In order to avoid her, he leaves pretty much right away to go trading; so Olga ends up taking her anger out on Ella, forcing her to live as a *servant* in the house once Hattie tells her about her forced obedience. Poor Ella is completely miserable; but the one thing that keeps her going is her constant correspondence with Prince Char, who keeps *hinting* in his letters that he would like to marry her -- until he gives up and straight-up confesses his love. You know, it was actually quite refreshing to read a story where love is shown as two people getting *along* and not *hating* each other, and not waiting till the absolute last minute to admit it -- which, quite frankly, says a lot about how love is *portrayed* in films and stories.

Overjoyed at first, Ella quickly realizes that she can't afford to *be* with him because too many people already *know* about and would find *out* about her curse; she could be instructed to betray or even *hurt* him. In order to protect him from her, Ella fakes a letter from Hattie informing him that she had laughed at his request and then eloped with an old man on the verge of death in order to inherit his money, breaking his heart to keep him safe. Upon discovering this latest way that the curse has *hurt* Ella, Mandy loses her temper and summons Lucinda. She tricks her, using reverse psychology, into placing her curses upon *herself*, spending a month as a squirrel, and then a month as a child with the virtue of obedience -- it was, in fact, surprisingly *easy* for Mandy to get her to do this, raising the question as to why she hadn't done it *decades* ago and saved *countless* people from her "gifts"!

Anyways, Ella puts up with her forced slavery to her stepfamily for a few more months, hoping that once Lucinda learned the error of her ways, she would finally be *willing* to lift her affliction. Unfortunately, Mandy's lesson works a little *too* well; Lucinda has such a terrible time that she renounces powerful magic altogether, meaning she *can't* lift the curse off her. She promises that one day, she will do some small, insignificant magic for her; but that's all she can really offer.

Heartbroken and resigned to a lifetime of misery, Ella's only wish is to see Char one last time; fortunately, it turns out he's holding three balls in the near future to meet a new potential bride. Mandy tries to warn her that seeing him again will only make her feel worse; but Ella calls in her promised favor from *Lucinda*, who enchants a pumpkin to be her coach, some mice to be her horses and coachmen, and dresses her up in a magical dress -- but tells that because it's only weak magic, it will wear off at midnight; so she has to be back in time, blah blah blah, you...see where this is going. Unsurprisingly, she also wears the glass shoes that Char gave her.

She wears a fancy mask over her face so Char won't recognize her and intends to just talk to him a little -- but over the course of the three nights, they end up falling in love all *over* again; and he chooses *her* to propose to. *Enraged* with jealousy, Hattie pulls the mask off her face, exposing her true identity. Everyone is shocked to *see* Ella; so she escapes in the confusion, dropping one of her shoes on the way out. The next day, the prince turns up at her house looking for her, having figured out that the letter she sent must have been a *lie* and *determined* to win her back. The family claim it couldn't *possibly* have been her because she's just a servant girl; but of course, he tries the old "if the shoe fits" test -- and in this case, it actually makes more sense because of her tiny fairy feet.

Char once again proposes marriage, but that puts Ella right back in the same position she was in before: *wanting* to be with him, but *knowing* that could end in her being forced to *kill* him! Unfortunately, everyone in the *room* starts giving her orders: Hattie tells her to leave, Char tells her *not* to leave and demands to know what's going on, and then Dame *Olga* tells her to say yes. Fueled by the power of love, Ella resists the curse for so long that it breaks completely; and she tells Char that she won't marry him. *Realizing* what's happened, she celebrates and tells him that because she said no, they can now get married. They live happily ever after and are much nicer to the people who took advantage of her than *I* would have been in her place. The end.

Okay, I'm gonna level with you, Muggles: when I was reading this, I didn't make the Cinderella connection until Lucinda was helping her get ready for the ball right at the end. Now, I know what you're thinking; you're thinking, "Good Lord, Terrence, you sexy, magical man-beast of love, how the hell did you miss that? The *key* is in the bloody *name*!" -- that's *exactly* how you thought it. Okay, first of all, I just thought her name was Ella because it went really well with the word "enchanted"; and second of all, the reason I didn't pick up on it until really, really late was because...well...if you don't go in expecting it, it sort of creeps up on you -- admittedly, the glass *slippers* should've been a massive giveaway; but, ehhhhh. Everything fits into the story so naturally, you don't realize it's building up towards the complete Cinderella setup until all the pieces are in place. Because her father didn't marry Dame Olga until about two-thirds of the way into the book, the wicked stepsisters are...just mean girls that she knows and doesn't like. You got to know them as Hattie and Olive; so when they *became* her stepsisters, they were *still* Hattie and Olive -- they were just...also her stepsisters now. Then when Dame Olga starts making Ella do all the housework, you think she's being a total bitch and taking out her resentment for the father on the daughter and *don't* think she's doing that because she's a "wicked stepmother". I guess what I'm trying to say is, I've never before encountered a version of the Cinderella story that actually took the time to introduce the stepmother and the stepsisters as *people* first, or took the time to show *why* the prince would love Cinderella or why Cinderella would love *him*, before everyone just settled into their assigned fairy tale trope job roles; so...I just didn't make the connection.

All in all, while it's obviously not my *favorite* story involving magic -- because, well, you know (shows the Ravenclaw house crest on his robe) -- it *is* a damn good read, and I would highly recommend it. Right! I guess it's time to describe the *film* -- well, hello, Anne Hathaway; welcome back to the show.

The Film
Terrence (V.O.): Ella lives in the magical kingdom of...umm...Emir?...a rather unusual land that's *kind of* in the medieval period, but also clearly based on modern-day America, as it has wooden escalators, yellow taxi carriages, and posters and fan clubs. On the day of her birth, she's visited by a powerful, but apparently a very immature and obnoxious fairy by the name of Lucinda, who gifts her with the virtue of obedience, believing it will make her the perfect child; Ella can never refuse an order for the rest of her life -- I do hope you were paying attention to that because that is the last familiar-sounding sentence you're going to hear for quite a while. When Ella is given an order, the curse appears to temporarily take control over her body and *occasionally* gives her *superhuman abilities* in order to properly obey them -- if she's told to be quick, she becomes the Flash; if she's told to freeze, she stops mid-air; and if she's told to fight, she becomes a black belt. The limits of this are never truly tested in the film, but you have to wonder what would have happened if she'd been told to fly like a bird or shit gold bricks out of her ass.

Anyways, Ella's mother dies while she is a child, leaving her in the care of her *loving*, but unemployed father and fairy godmother Mandy -- Mandy apparently has only weak and unreliable powers, so she can't undo the curse for Ella. Skipping ahead a undefined number of years, Ella -- who is now in her early 20s, judging from the age of the actress -- is distressed to discover that her kindhearted father has, in order to keep the tiny cottage they live in, just married an evil, ugly, rich woman named Olga, who was quite interested in gaining his noble title -- incidentally, you're not fooling anyone, Joanna Lumley. (makes a purring sound) Ella doesn't get along with her new stepsisters, who are obsessed with the kingdom's handsome young prince, who everyone calls "Char". Ella isn't a fan of the prince *or* his regent uncle, who is ruling the country because his father was supposedly killed by ogres and- Oh, hey! (adds one to the "The Father Wasn't Dead in the Book" counter, bringing the total to 5) I'm beginning to see why The Dom doesn't want kids; if they ever adapt your life into a movie, it's a fucking death sentence! Anyway, Ella isn't too keen on them because they have either segregated all the magical non-humans in the nation or forced them into slavery.

Hattie, the elder, nastier of Ella's two stepsisters, realizes that Ella can't disobey a command during a community college debate. Prince Char makes an appearance with his uncle -- who, just in case you weren't entirely sure was the bad guy from his black goatee, constant maniacal laughter, and before-mentioned *enslavement* of all magical *creatures*, has a pet talking snake coiled around his scepter that whispers bad things to people. Ella tries to hold a protest, but is sent away by her stepsister. Prince Char is then set upon by a horde of fangirls and runs into Ella while escaping them. They don't get on at first because she blames him for all the stuff his *uncle* is doing, but he takes a liking to the fact that she's not sycophantic like the rest of the female population of the kingdom! He almost gets her killed by telling her to wait in the road for a minute, but then saves her from a speeding coach. Slightly later, Hattie uses the curse to force Ella to steal some glass shoes for her; but she gets caught by the guards and arrested after a chase.

Fed up with all this crap, Ella tells Mandy she's going to track down Lucinda and ask her to lift the curse. Mandy gives her a book to help...which...turns out to be her boyfriend Benny -- she apparently accidentally turned him into a book 20 years ago and doesn't know how to undo it. He's able to show her basic things, like moving pictures of where Lucinda is; they figure out she's in giants country, so Ella sets off in that direction. Shortly into her journey, she comes across a...(sighs) *elf* named Slannen who is being tortured by some human ruffians. Despite not knowing about her curse, Slannen orders her to do complex kung fu moves; and the curse lets her beat the crap out of them. Slannen talks her into coming back to his village for the evening; they try to sneak in, but get noticed. Apparently, if the elves have visitors, they have to perform a complex song and dance to welcome them -- you know, I shared this with my family's former house elf Stumpy; and even *he* assured me that this is undignified and distasteful.

Slannen reveals that he's always wanted to be a lawyer, but the rules of the kingdom made up by Uncle McObvious-Nasty state that elves can *only* make a living being performers -- I'm not entirely sure what benefit he would reap from that, aside from being evil for evil's sake; but there you are. Ella suggests that he come *with* her so he can petition the royal family to change this rule. The next day, the two of them are set upon by ogres who, despite being very dimwitted, take advantage of her curse through dumb luck. Just before they can cook her, the prince turns up and fights off the ogres; Ella helps because she now has combative skills -- even *without* orders, apparently.

Char decides to escort them to the giants' village. Along the way, Slannen asks him about becoming a lawyer; but Char seems disinterested in making any changes to the kingdom himself *or* being king in general, preferring to leave that to his uncle, Malice Incarnate. When they get to the giants' land, however, Charmont is shocked to find that they've been enslaved to work in the fields growing food for the kingdom. Ella encourages him to talk to them to get a better feel for what's actually going on in his kingdom, while *she* goes and looks for Lucinda. Alas, it turns out she just missed her, as she flew off before getting pulled over by the...police, I guess? The giants tell her to sing, and the curse gives her the power to, umm...invent Queen.

(shows Ella singing Queen's "Somebody to Love")

Terrence (V.O.): Slannen then starts dating a giant girl...I mean, I get the appeal; but I just don't think he's thought it through, logistics-wise. Ella and Char bond and then make out a bit, and then they head back to the capital city so Char can prepare for his coronation and Ella can look through the public records for Lucinda's permanent address.

Char tells Uncle Oh-My-Goodness-How-Do-You-Not-See-That-He's-The-Bad-Guy that he intends to ask Ella to marry him at midnight. Hattie and Olive also happen to be there after they and their mother half-inch an invitation intended for Ella; they see Ella with Prince Char and *try* to sneak after them, but get caught, leading to them telling Uncle Seriously-All-You-Have-To-Do-Is-Look-At-Him all about Ella's curse. He decides to use this to his advantage and *orders* her to kill Char at midnight right after he proposes and not tell anyone about it. In an attempt to avoid this, Ella sends Char a letter saying she simply can't be with him -- (fake crying) but don't ask why! -- and gets Slannen to tie her to a tree outside the city before going back to rally the elves and giants.

By pure chance, Lucinda turns up, which gives Ella a chance to beg her to take her gift back; Lucinda is somewhat offended and tells her to remove it herself if she hates it so much. She then decides to show there's no hard feelings by *unchaining* her and dressing her up for the coronation. The curse forces her to go to the party, where Char takes her aside and leads her to a room full of mirrors to propose. Ella tries to fight the curse and holds off long enough to realize that she can remove it *herself* by...ordering herself not to be obedient anymore in the mirror. This works; but Char sees the dagger, and Uncle Jafar-Meets-Goldfinger has her thrown in the dungeons as an attempted regicide. Prince Char is confused, but, unfortunately, also easily manipulated into *not* going to talk to her and straighten everything out.

Meanwhile, outside the castle, Slannen has returned with the giants and elves -- wait, how close are all these villages if he can get there and back again in just a few hours? Oh, never mind. Benny fills them in on what's happened to Ella, and some *ogres* turn up and offer to help, too; they sneak into the castle by claiming to be the executioner...who's driving a giant black carriage that fits *all* of them and apparently no one noticed the theft of...and rescue Ella. They then use Benny to spy on Uncle That-Guy-From-Lazytown-But-Even-More-So and see that he's switching out the king's crown with a poisoned version -- which shouldn't have been an issue unless Char was planning to *eat* it, but I've given up questioning this film's logic at this point. They storm into the throne room to save Char; the guards are summoned, but are no match for the giants; sooo...sooo the evil talking snake presses a button on the wall...and summons ninjas -- look, don't shoot the messenger; I'm just describing this mess.

Mid-battle, Ella -- who once again shows an impressive fighting ability without an explanation as to how she knows how to *do* that -- explains to Char that Uncle Picture-You'd-See-In-A-Dictionary-Next-To-The-Word-Betrayal founds out about her curse and used it to try to kill him. Char might not have believed her; but the snake decided that this would be the perfect moment to try to *kill* him again, thus taking away any ambiguity in the matter. Uncle Satan-The-Lord-Of-Darkness-Called-Even-He-Thinks-You're-Overdoing-It then puts *on* the crown, forgetting that it's *poisoned*, and dies. Hattie tries to control Ella one last time; Ella tells her to fuck off; Benny gets turned back into a human -- you know, it's called "Transfiguration", buddy; it's not actually that difficult -- presumably, Slannen gets to be a lawyer; and everyone lives happily ever after...and, umm, perform a musical number.

(Terrence ponders for a moment)

Terrence: Couple of notes.

Terrence (V.O.): Merlin's beard, the green screen effects were bad in this! I'm pretty sure The *Dom* could do a better job, and he's half-drunk at 3:30 in the afternoon.

The Dom (V.O.): Hey!!

Terrence (V.O.): You have a problem, and we're going to have to talk about it eventually!

There were some truly bizarre continuity errors in this film -- like, when they get to the capital city, it's *clearly* bordered on three sides by a lake and up against a hill; but later, the *same* city is now surrounded by endless fields of flowers. They couldn't even remember to stick to the basic *concept* in this; at one point, the *curse* kicks in when a city guards says "You're under arrest." -- that's a *statement*, not an order!

How the fuck are we supposed to believe that the giants would let themselves get enslaved by a group of humans who were clearly never a real threat to them?! Is this film really saying that all someone had to do was tell Ella to stop obeying orders for her to be free from then on?! She really went her whole life being miserable when there was an easy solution available the whole time? Geez, that's got to be the *only* thing stupider than overcoming it with the power of love.

Okay, so, I know this is a made-up fairy tale land, so they can have whatever accents they want; but the weird mix of American and English really started to grate on me after a while -- a pet peeve, I know, but I do believe I'm entitled to them. I am *really* confused about how much Char knew about the curse in this -- I mean, he went out of his way to make it clear to Ella that when he told her to kiss him, he wasn't making it an *order*; and then at the end, when Ella is explaining everything, she just says "Your uncle found out about the curse." with no further explanation of what the curse *was*. So you had to assume that Char knew that she had to obey everything she was told; but if that's the case, why did he get so pissed off at her for trying to kill him? It would have been *obvious* that it wasn't her doing!

To be *absolutely* fair to the film, there were one or two jokes here and there that got a small chuckle from me, despite the foul mood it was *putting* me in -- which is quite an achievement.

Ella: Look, I think it's only fair to warn you that I'm *practiced* in the ancient art...of origami!

Bluto: Paper folding?

Ella: Oh, I was...hoping you wouldn't know what that was.

Terrence (V.O.): Oh, and Eric Idle was in this -- come on, dude, you were a Python; you're better than this.

Terrence's Final Thoughts
Terrence: Okay, I know I *said* I wasn't gonna go into detail comparing these two things; buuuuut I just want to mention one or two things. I find it quite interesting that the *book* did its own thing in the beginning and middle, then became unmistakably a Cinderella story at the *end*; while the film *started* as a Cinderella story, then diverged and never came back to it after that. I noticed that by moving Ella's mother's death to earlier in her life and widening the time jump, they effectively removed the need to show Ella dealing with the crushing loss, which was a large and quite moving part of the story originally. They made Mandy hot -- I...don't know how I feel about that. I'm going to suggest to The Dom that he call it the "Anne Hathaway effect", when the film takes a character who's a *complete* asshole in the book and make him or her quite *nice* in the film -- not because I believe it's her *doing* in any way; she just *always* seems to be there at the scene of the crime (shows Mia and Clarisse Renaldi in The Princess Diaries).

So, final, final thoughts. I'm guessing you knew it was going to be quite difficult for me to *like* this film from the second I invoked the "in name only" clause. I mean, that's not universal -- The Dom made his peace with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? -- but in this case, *all* originality from the story was stripped away in the film -- *every* trope that the book seemed gratifyingly aware of and used to subvert your expectations, the *film* embraced wholeheartedly and at face value. On top of that, they also dumbed down *everything* I really liked about this book -- Ella saving herself using intelligence and *cunning* is replaced by solving every situation by *others* utilizing the superpowers given to her by her curse; the complex and unique differences between all the races, with their *range* of motivations and morals, were all completely erased to be replaced by the rather standard, simplified message "Diversity is good, prejudice is bad."; and in general, everything that was genuinely interesting about the characters or the story or the locations were replaced by out-of-time *pop culture* references.

I just...I really don't understand why this film was an adaptation in the first place; they *clearly* wanted to tell a completely different story -- find another reason for her to have been cursed and change her name, and I doubt anyone watching it would have made the Ella Enchanted connection. Surprisingly, the book's author, Gail Carson Levine, has stated that she quite likes the movie; although I couldn't help but notice that she went out of her way to say how great Anne Hathaway is and how creative she thought the choices were *without* saying that she thought it did justice to her book in any way. A dumb movie that's aware that it's dumb *can* be a lot of fun if you're in the right mood; so it's possible that if I'd seen this film without having just read the book, I might have considered it fairly harmless -- not very funny to *me*, but at least possessing a recognizable sense of humor. But there *really* is nothing I hate more than a film that takes a *surprisingly* smart story and *makes* it stupid; so I'm sorry, film fans -- this is not only "in *name* only", it's also kind of an insult to the book. Terrence out!

(he Disapparates)