Producers: Barry Josephson, Barry Sonnenfeld and Amy Adams   Director: Adam Shankman   Screenplay: Brigitte Hales   Cast: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, Maya Rudolph, Yvette Nicole Brown, Jayma Mays, Gabriella Baldacchino, Idina Menzel, James Marsden, Oscar Nuñez, Kolton Stewart, Griffin Newman, Alan Tudyk, James Monroe Iglehart, Michael McCorry Rose and Ann Harada   Distributor: Disney+

Grade: C

It’s been a full fifteen years since Disney’s self-mocking “Enchanted” delighted audiences, and one might have hoped that a decade and a half would have allowed someone to come up with some nifty ideas for a sequel.  It didn’t: like so many long-gestating follow-ups, “Disenchanted” proves a disappointment, straining to recapture the original’s magic and failing.  But like “Hocus Pocus 2”—also screening on Disney+–it may be enough for fans of its predecessor.

It does bring back the first movie’s primary cast.  Amy Adams returns as Giselle, the chirpy heroine from the cartoon realm of Andalasia who in the earlier film was transported to the live-action “human” world, specifically New York City, by the evil queen when dim-bulb Prince Edward (James Marsden) was on the verge of marrying her, thus threatening the queen’s hold on power.  But despite the queen’s machinations, Giselle found a “happily ever after” in the Big Apple with handsome lawyer Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey) and his darling six-year old daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey).  Meanwhile Edward paired up with Patrick’s former fiancée Nancy (Idina Menzel), who became Queen of Andalasia by wedding Edward back in cartoon-land. 

The sequel is set ten years later, when Morgan, now played by Gabriella Baldacchino, is a sulky teenager and Giselle and Robert have a newborn named Sophie (Mila and Lara Jackson).   For some reason Giselle has become somewhat dissatisfied with life in the city and convinces Robert to move to an upstate suburb called Monroeville, which advertises itself as having a fairytale vibe.  The move is stressful for Robert, who’s unhappy about having to commute to his law office in the city every day, but especially so for Morgan, who’s leaving behind her friends.  The fact that the house they’ve purchased—a rambling, castle-like place—is still under repair adds to the discord.

Matters deteriorate further as Giselle, who’s never been able to acclimate herself to “reality” and still longs for an Andalasian ambience, foolishly attempts to help Morgan fit in at her new school, in the process antagonizing Malvina Monroe (Maya Rudolph), the town’s queen bee, who’s always accompanied by a couple of docile underlings, Rosaleen (Yvette Nicole Brown) and Ruby (Jayma Mays).  But things really crater when homesick Giselle misuses the magic wand given to Sophie by her godparents Edward and Nancy to transform Monroeville into something remarkably like Andalasia.

The results are disastrous.  Giselle turns into the wicked stepmother Morgan has begun to see her as, and her chipmunk pal Pip (voiced by Griffin Newman) into a wicked cat.  Robert, armed with a sword given him by Edward, turns into an inept would-be dragon-slayer.  And Malvina becomes a true wicked witch, bent on complete domination.  A scroll that came with the wand, voiced by Alan Tudyk, informs Giselle that her spell has to be reversed using the wand by midnight, or it will be permanent.  Cue a battle between her and Malvina that consumes much of the film’s final third.  You know what the outcome will be, but it takes a very long time to get there, with Giselle and Malvina shooting bursts of energy at one another like characters from a “Star Wars” wannabe while the clock inches toward twelve after the ball. 

Marsden and Menzel have fun reprising their original roles, with the former bringing the same dull-witted braggadocio to the role as in the first movie, and Menzel getting the best of the songs provided by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, which overall don’t come close to matching their work in “Enchanted.”  (The nadir comes in the duet “Badder” sung by Adams and Rudolph, which was apparently thought a prospective show-stopper, since it’s repeated over the closing credits.  Director Adam Shankman, whose hand gets heavier as the movie rolls on—a trait that also affects the editing by Emma E. Hickox and Chris Lebenzon—did the unremarkable choreography, too.)  Dempsey is game, but mostly looks lost, and while Adams is engaging playing the Disney storybook princess in the movie’s first third and earns some smiles as Giselle surprises herself with nasty remarks during her transformation, she’s just boilerplate “evil” when Giselle turns bad.  Baldacchino makes a conventionally snappy teen; even her tentative romance with Kolton Stewart, as Malvina’s son Tyson, is dull.  But it’s Rudolph who fares worst, having little to do but glower and glare malevolently.

Tasked with constructing a New York town in Ireland, where the picture was mostly shot, production designer has done a respectable job, and Joan Bergin’s costumes are suitably florid.  The visual effects by Charley Henley and David Feinsilber are pretty good as far Pip (in both forms) is concerned, but the more elaborate ones in the last act are mediocre at best; and a sequence in which Giselle’s kitchen appliances come to life, an obvious nod to “Beauty and the Best,” falls flat; generally the 2-D animated scenes do not show the Disney team at their best.  Simon Duggan’s cinematography is bright at first and turns drably darker as the action goes on, reflecting the entire film.

It might simply be that this was a property well suited to its time in 2007 but one that hasn’t aged well.  Whatever the reason, it’s not likely to enchant today’s audiences as the first film did fifteen years ago.

Producers: Sean Anders, John Morris, David Koplan, George Dewey, Will Ferrell and Jessica Elbau Director: Sean Anders   Screenplay: Sean Anders and John Morris   Cast: Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, Octavia Spencer, Patrick Page, Sunita Mani, Loren Woods, Tracy Morgan, Joe Tippett, Marlow Barkley, Aimee Carrero, Andrea Anders and Jen Tullock   Distributor: Apple+

Grade: C

There have been so many movies based on “A Christmas Carol” (the best, by far, remaining Brian Desmond Hurst’s venerable 1951 version with the inimitable Alastair Sim) that we’ve now reached the point where permutations of permutations outpace simple retellings.  The “original” idea in this variant by writers Sean Anders and John Morris, with an assist from songwriters Benji Pasek and Justin Paul, is to mash together Bill Murray’s modernized “Scrooged” with Albert Finney’s 1970 musicalization of Dickens, with a touch of automated Santa’s workshop technology tossed in.  The result is “Spirited,” a would-be Christmas perennial that will wilt pretty fast, thanks to its snarky adolescent tone, short-shelf-life pop culture references and prefabricated sentimentality.

The premise is that after the operation arranged by Jacob Marley for Scrooge back in the nineteenth century proved successful, Marley (Patrick Page) turned it into an annual event, in which a large staff chooses one misguided person to be targeted for visitation by the customary three spirits on Christmas Eve and taught to become better by the experience.  It’s a laborious exercise that requires intense research and elaborate set construction to fabricate the individual’s past, present and probable future convincingly.

As the movie opens, the crew celebrates another victory in the reclamation of Karen (Rose Byrne), a Karen (get it?) who has been making her neighbors’ lives miserable but is now all apologetic and friendly.  Marley has already chosen next year’s project—a bullying hotel manager—but on visiting the tyrant’s domain Present (Will Ferrell), the longtime Ghost of…, looking for a real challenge, prefers someone else—Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), a snide, conniving marketing master in town to sell his services to a convention of Christmas tree growers whose wares are increasingly being supplanted by the artificial variety.  In a big production number reminiscent of Harold Hill’s “Trouble,” Briggs rouses the conventioneers to take up a “War on Artificial Trees” that will build on the “War on Christmas” some folks have alleged is occurring, thus saving their bottom line.

Despite Marley’s admonition that Briggs has been categorized as unredeemable, Present, along with his ghostly colleagues—Past (Sunita Mani), who eyes the handsome Briggs lustfully, and Yet to Come (tall, robed Loren Woods, but voiced, Darth Vader style, by Tracy Morgan)—wants to go for the hard target.

It certainly seems an impossible job.  Not only did Briggs stiff his former boss by stealing his clients, but his ultra-competent assistant Kimberly (Octavia Spencer) as well.  And to show how horrible he can be, though he’s never been the family type Clint, prodded by his brother (Joe Tippett), agrees to help Wren (Marlow Barkley), the daughter of their dead sister Carrie (Andrea Anders) in her quest to win the student body presidency at her elementary school.  He does so by ordering Kimberly to dig up dirt on Wren’s opponent, a sterling kid, and happily seizes on an old internet posting in which the boy made a tactless remark about his parents’ holiday meals for the poor.  Mission accomplished.

Present tries his darnedest nonetheless, and in the process gets all googly-eyed over Kimberly, who’s ambivalent about facilitating Clint’s machinations.  But his efforts go nowhere, because Briggs proves adept at turning the tables, challenging Present about his own past—something that leads to their returning to the nineteenth century, because Present started out as someone you’ll recognize—and his refusal to retire after many years of service.  Rest assured, though, that things will end predictably well for them both, despite some pretty dark turns toward the close, including the script’s misguided reference to a suicide.

The exposition portion of “Spirited,” mostly consisting of banter between Ferrell and Reynolds, is pretty labored, not only because the latter’s characteristic rapid-fire smugness is getting old and Ferrell’s wide-eyed naiveté doesn’t work here as well as it did in “Elf,” but because the script is encumbered by a lot of contemporary references that aren’t terribly funny and are going to age quickly; there are also way too many wink-wink moments to signal to us that the makers are in on the joke (when one observer asks, “Why are they singing?” the answer is “Because it’s a musical”).  (The flat pacing of Anders’ direction and Brad Wilhite’s editing is no help, either.)  Page and Spencer fare somewhat better, though they both play one-note figures, and the rest of the cast get into the spirit of things.  Cameos by Judi Dench and Jimmy Fallon fall flat.

The songs (and there are a good many) are hardly memorable—typical modern-day Broadway-esque numbers, with quasi-melodies that have a familiar feel and mostly nondescript lyrics; and while the stars manage to get by vocally, the strain often shows.  The same is true of their dancing, though the athletic choreography by Chloe Arnold, in which massed groups stomp about and they can just be part of the ensemble, disguises their limitations.  In musical terms the most successful sequence is probably “Good Afternoon,” presumably intended as a spoof of “Thank You Very Much” from “Scrooge,” which is based on the notion that, we’re told, the greeting was the nineteenth-century equivalent of “FU”—an example of the sort of mildly risqué material that’s common here, and will appeal to thirteen-year olds and adults with an immature streak.

“Spirited: represents an expensive proposition for Apple+, which has until now financed more modestly budgeted original movies.  The production doesn’t have the glitz of major studio releases, or even of some of Netflix’s mega-movies, but it looks pretty good streaming, though the production design (Clayton Hartley) and costumes (Erin Benach) lack the highest degree of sumptuousness and, except in the dance sequences, Kramer Morgenthau’s cinematography is pretty pedestrian, and sometimes murky.  The same is true of Sean Devereaux’s visual effects, which are okay but not all that impressive.  Dominic Lewis’ background score hits the expected beats.

The result is a Christmas package that, to crib from a different holiday, is more trick than treat.