All the women in my family, grandmother to child, grew up under the spell of the Disney fairytales; thus, when Enchanted (rated PG) began in exaggerated animation, seeming to spoof all our childhood traditions, I was nervous… needlessly.

This is a traditional fairytale. A girl from the forest, Giselle (played by Amy Adams), falls in love with the handsome Prince Edward (James Marsden), thereby infuriating his evil stepmother (Susan Sarandon). The stepmother throws Giselle into an alternate reality, New York City. In the real world, a divorce lawyer, Robert (Patrick Dempsey), reluctantly rescues Giselle, even while the rest of the fairytale characters follow, hoping either to save or destroy her.

The exaggerated fantasy, which is laughable in cartoon form, becomes balanced by the exaggerated reality of New York City. They are opposites that attract, as are Giselle and Robert. Robert is a modern man, wary of commitment, cynical of romance. Giselle embodies every fairytale princess’s belief in true love, found at first sight. They begin to soften each other on contact, creating by the end of the film a definition of love that is neither bleak nor whimsical, but enchanting.

Nowhere in the film does this work as well as in the Central Park scene. Giselle begins to sing and the entire park unites to help – becoming a “Beauty and the Beast” extravaganza. Mid-serenade, the logical mind surrenders to the possibility that an international, multi-generational, artistic populace would help a girl in a flowered dress sing to a man in a suit. After all, the mind rationalizes, this is New York… not LA.

Because Giselle is in the real world, there are a few sexual innuendos, but here the movie treads carefully. Amy Adams no more senses their occurrence than the animated Snow White would, and Patrick Dempsey plays modern with purity.