Today, another movie based on a teen lit property is de rigueur. Had Ella Enchanted foreseen that movement, it might have been more successful when it came out ten years ago this week. Instead, Ella was designed more to cash in on star Anne Hathaway’s princess cinema cred, and a bit on the popularity of Shrek. I simply think it’s a great movie that deserves to be revisited. However, pretty major spoilers for the book and the movie Ella Enchanted follow. This is a look back, and as such it has to be complete.
While Gail Carson Levine’s novel might have been popular enough that some of its fans were invited to the film’s press junket, it wasn’t Twilight or The Hunger Games. In fact, it’s one of the loosest cinematic adaptations of a book in the last decade, especially given how strictly those movies, as well as the Harry Potters, stick to their source material. Levine participated in the press junket so she was probably not displeased with the film, which basically took her novel’s central hook and built a different story around it, kind of like Shrek did come to think of it.
In the kingdom of Frell, Ella (Anne Hathaway) has an incompetent fairy godmother named Lucinda (Vivica A. Fox) who gives her a “gift” of obedience at her birth. Ella has to obey any order she is given. Evil stepsisters take advantage of this. Unknowing strangers get her into trouble with offhanded colloquial remarks. Telling Ella to go to sleep compels her to sleep. Saying “bite me” creates a funny literal interpretation. Telling her to “hurry up” gives her super speed until the task is completed. Ella’s dying mother (dead mom… check!) orders her not to tell anyone about her curse, lest they take advantage of her, so that explains why Ella never just says, “Listen, I have this curse. Just please don’t phrase things as commands.” Still, the stepsisters and other villains figure it out.
The allegory is clear. You struggle to define yourself in childhood while adults and society try to define you. It’s a meaningful youth empowerment fable, and also a unique conflict for a fantasy film. Ella Enchanted explores the problems caused by Ella’s curse at every turn, and it makes a far more interesting quest than simply “kill Voldemort” or “find the dwarf gold.” She’s battling her involuntary reflexes, her manipulator’s commands and even innocent remarks that force her to perform all along the way. It’s not all shenanigans though. It’s heartbreaking when Ella is ordered to say horrible things to her best friend.
It’s political too, as Frell has fallen victim to a corrupt king (Cary Elwes, of course)’s policies of segregation and forced labor. Elves are kidnapped to perform in the palace and forbidden to practice any other profession but entertainment. In her quest to find Lucinda and break the spell, Ella meets Prince Char (Hugh Dancy), the evil king’s nephew, and opens his eyes to the real problems his uncle beset on Frell. Char is also the first person in Ella’s life to truly empower her to make her own decisions. What a positive portrayal of a relationship for young viewers, that you should be with a person who wants you to be independent.
The movie’s kingdom of Frell is a postmodern jamboree with tabloids that reflect modern day celebrity culture, plastic surgery in the form of batox (bad feces and ox blood) and anachronistic technology like a non-electronic escalator. It’s got something in common with steampunk there, and “The Flintstones” with its ability to find medieval ways to reproduce our modern luxuries.
Frell is also a world scored by classic rock music, like Smash Mouth’s cover of The Monkees in Shrek. Ella was three years after A Knight’s Tale and four after Moulin Rouge, but opts for cover versions rather than original tracks, or having the cast sing them. Director Tommy O’Haver sneaks as many full musical numbers as he can get away with into Ella Enchanted, and unlike that other Anne Hathaway musical, he doesn’t shoot them entirely in close-up. Although they did miss an opportunity for a Grease reference at the end. Given the nature of this world, the horse drawn carriage could have flown off into the sky at the end of the final musical number. Oh well.
I liked the movie so much I read the book. It was a pretty straight fantasy novel without the modern touches. The story was mostly different, but with the same core of this allegory, being cursed with obedience. The book had a nice twist where Char orders her to marry him, and she wills herself to break the curse, then accepts voluntarily. Pretty good message, not to let anyone force you into marriage. I like what the movie does better. I certainly prefer the version of Char that encourages Ella to be independent. Though the quest is to find Lucinda, the answer is not magic, but rather Ella cleverly figuring out a way to order herself to stop obeying. It’s built into the curse all along, but Ella has more agency than Dorothy did when she found out about the deus ex machina at the end of Wizard of Oz.
I always wondered what if Ella were ordered to do something impossible, even by magic kingdom standards? What if someone said, “Ella, go block out the sun?” There’s no way she could have done that from the ground of Frell. I asked Levine and she said Ella would have to try, but that she was careful in the book to make sure every order was something Ella could feasibly obey. In the movie, Ella is ordered to freeze and becomes a still image until released, thanks to some post-Matrix bullet time effect. So there is some flexibility there.
Ella Enchanted opened to only $6 million in April 2011 and inched its way up to $22 million total. Despite my rave review at the time (I believe I called it more magical than Harry Potter and funnier than Shrek but that review is long gone to the ether of the internet), no one seems to remember it. I don’t recall there being an outcry about changes from the book. That certainly bothered the readers, but not enough to influence the box office. Who can account for a lack of public interest? Maybe it was bad marketing, maybe the concept was too complicated to explain in a TV spot, maybe people just didn’t like the story.
Tommy O’Haver (Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss) was developing another comedy called Magick for Dreamworks, a body swapping comedy, but it never happened. He has directed television and only one other movie since (An American Crime).
Later in 2004, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement opened big and threatened to make Hathaway a princess forever. She since diversified with hits The Devil Wears Prada, Brokeback Mountain, Get Smart and The Dark Knight Rises, and acclaim in Rachel Getting Married. She won an Oscar nine years after Ella for singing “I Dreamed a Dream” in Les Miserables, finally vicariously rewarded for her performance of “Somebody to Love” in Ella Enchanted. Queen ain’t easy to sing either!
Harry Potter was already on its way with fairly literal adaptations of the books by the time Ella Enchanted came out. With the success of Twilight and The Hunger Games, plus “True Blood” and “The Vampire Diaries” on television, Hollywood would pursue other teen fantasy lit franchises aggressively. The track record would always be spotty, with The Golden Compass, Beautiful Creatures, The Mortal Instruments and Vampire Academy bombing for every Divergent that hit. Ella was hardly as well known as many of those novels, despite its Newbery Honor. Later in 2004, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events would also fail to launch a kid lit franchise, despite the star power of Jim Carrey at his peak. Maybe Ella and Lemony were materials too young for a moviegoing audience, but none of this is a science. It didn’t hurt Harry Potter.
Neither the book nor the movie of Ella Enchanted would fit into the current cycle of teen lit franchises. It wasn’t a franchise, first of all. Levine only wrote another book about the land of Frell after the Ella Enchanted movie came out. Except for the Shrek movies, fantasy genre would return to the Lord of the Rings style of serious fantasy with “Game of Thrones” and the Hobbit movies.
Maybe the lesson is don’t change the book. At least that way they could count on the readers, but then I would not have gotten this movie that appealed to me on so many levels.
As much as I’d like to think Ella Enchanted would have been bigger had it been made today, or that there was a way to sell it to the perfect audience back in 2004, it would probably always be a little out of time with its audience. It’s neither a straight up Tolkien-esque fantasy nor a melodramatic love triangle. All I can say now is that it’s still a great movie and I hope this anniversary can get a few more people to give it a chance.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
