*Finishes watching the new Wreck It Ralph 2 trailer with the princesses*
Do you know what set Enchanted apart from every other parody of Disney? Enchanted wasn’t a parody at all. Enchanted was a pastiche. (A pastiche of Disney done by Disney with Disney. I’ll get to that last part in a minute.)
See, a parody mocks something. A pastiche may poke fun at it but its ultimate goal is to always, always, celebrate it.
And the people behind Enchanted went so hard. Every single scene was filled with nothing less than pure respect and devotion to Disney, even as they were making jokes about the overused tropes that previous Disney films used.
So yes, you have wonderfully cheesy jokes like this:
While also having genuine, heartfelt, nonironic, moments like this:
That whole dance sequence was phenomenal. They didn’t have to go that hard but they did because they wanted to immerse you in the feeling of Disney!
I mean, look at this, right here:
It’s obviously a pastiche of this shot from Beauty and the Beast:
A pastiche, not a parody, because they weren’t mocking it. They were saying, “Hey, remember that beautiful scene that blew you away, yeah, it blew us away too, we’re going to make an homage to it because we loved it so much.”
And that’s just one of the hundreds of references and easter eggs in the film.
Like we all know the scene in the park where they burst into sing and Robert’s just standing there like:
A hilarious parody but it’s not a parody, it’s a pastiche, because when they’re bursting into song, it’s done to genuinely celebrate old Disney songs and not just mock them. Hey, fun fact, you know these dancers:
They’re the Chimney Sweepers (the actors who played them in Mary Poppins)!
They loved the Chimney Sweepers so they brought back the actors to do a three-second cameo in the film! There are hundreds of references and callbacks like that throughout the movie, all done to not only have a laugh at how cheesy Disney is but to celebrate that cheesiness with Disney, by Disney, with Disney (i/e: the references). It was the perfect homage!
That’s why Kristoff loudly scoffing about marrying a boy you just met falls flat; it’s meant to mock and not celebrate.
That’s why the new trailer with the princesses being reduced to one-dimensional archetypes while Vanellope looks scared for their wellbeing doesn’t work for me.
The jokes are funny, the animation was pretty, but there was no heart behind it.
Hell, even Shrek (and Shrek 2) of all things knew how to be a pastiche instead of an outright parody. That’s how you got genuinely epic moments like this:
Where they realized that yes, these tropes make for comedy gold, but there’s still something about them to be celebrated.
When Shrek celebrates Disney more than Disney’s celebrating Disney, there’s something wrong!
And I really hope that this new meta “haha we’re not like the other Disney films, we’re edgy, we’re mocking the old tropes” trend doesn’t stick around. Because these tropes may be sappy af, they may be overused, and there may be better ones out there, but they still deserve a happily ever after.
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