Two years after Amy Adams broke out and secured an Oscar nomination for her dizzy, disarming turn in modest indie Junebug, she found a way to smartly parlay that same wide-eyed ebullience to a much grander stage. The Disney caper Enchanted was a canny, crowd-pleasing charmer that stood as proof of Adams’s warm movie star appeal while also managing to stand out in a busy post-Shrek crowd of progressively grating fairytale meta snark.
The sequel, Disenchanted, is landing on Disney+ rather than in cinemas suggesting, yes, ongoing corporate greed, but also an understandable wariness over how a 15-year gap might have affected audience interest. As well-received as the film was back at the time (a $340m global gross and a 93% positive rating from critics), it’s not something that’s necessarily had a visible cultural imprint and Adams has moved away from comedy to more serious fare, most recently in a string of reviled lumps of failed Oscarbait, from Hillbilly Elegy to The Woman in the Window to Dear Evan Hansen (her last hit as a lead was 2016’s Arrival). While there might be a predictably substantial downturn in quality from film to film, it’s still a shrewd move for Adams, a breath of fresh air for someone who’s been stuck in the murk.
