Just look at her character Sister James in Doubt. Far too often the role of an “outsider woman” in a mainstream Hollywood production is a shallow archetype that begins and ends with the sentence “I’m not like other girls!” But Adams’s performances reflect many varied and equally complicated experiences of being a person who has trouble connecting with the people around her. It’s all about making yourself vulnerable so the emotions don’t seem artificial, whether you’re a grim small-town reporter reliving a horrible experience or a chipper princess chatting with a fish tank.īut the most essential aspect of Adams’ abilities showcased in Enchanted is her gift for capturing the experience of being an outsider. However, this quality was already apparent in Enchanted in scenes that require Giselle to do broad and potentially embarrassing things like mingling with the fish in a waiting room aquarium. She’d later utilize that fearlessness in works like Sharp Objects to unflinchingly tackle the long-term effects of trauma.
It’s a quality that goes hand-in-hand with her fearlessness as a performer. In both cases, Adams is so dedicated to the performance that she makes the extraordinary something you don’t question. Just as it’s impossible not to get wrapped up in Adams unabashedly belting out a showtune in Central Park in Enchanted, so too is it captivating to watch Adams navigate communicating with nonverbal extraterrestrials in Arrival. Her roles in films like Arrival make use of the effortless conviction Adams lent to the quintessential Disney princess. She meets a hunky jaded lawyer named Robert Phillip ( Patrick Dempsey), who does his best to help her out but has no time for fairy tales.Įven later works with less explicit parallels to the character of Giselle clearly show glimmers of Adams’s work in Enchanted. From here, Giselle has to come to terms with a world that doesn’t have much in the way of happy endings or talking animals. The portal transports her into the real world, smack dab in the middle of New York City. The plot of Enchanted follows the animated Princess Giselle on the day of her wedding, when the evil Queen Narissa ( Susan Sarandon) shoves her into a portal. In her engrossing work as Giselle, Adams is providing a thesis statement for her gifts as an actor. For another, Enchanted really crystallizes the traits that have made Adams such a captivating performer in the years since its release.
For one thing, it’s the movie that provided Adams with her big break as a mainstream leading lady.
But this isn’t just an average film from the Mouse House. That may sound strange, considering that Enchanted is a PG-rated Disney musical aimed at children.