Awake; Enchanted

Awake (Joby Harold, 2007) - C+

Ludicrous, and would have fared far worse had it not also been fascinating -- this is one of those movies I respond to because of how utterly whacked they are, on the theory that weird is almost always better than boring. Message here, believe it or not, is that the ultra-rich need to stick together, lest the not-as-fortunate hungrily converge on their livelihoods, if not their lives; and if you think it's not plausible for that to actually be the subtext of a Hollywood film, then, uh, you need to see this. Add to that the intense Oedipal overtones of the central relationship -- Christensen and Olin, not Christensen and Alba -- and what you've got is strange, strange, strange; had it also been competent, it might have been brilliant. But the first-time director sadly botches the high concept -- Christensen's panicked voiceover is at an obvious remove from the surgery (you can imagine him in the sound booth, trying to sound terrified), and having an invisible version of the protagonist haranguing people who cannot see or hear him is just not a potent dramatic device, as I thought we had learned from The Invisible. Are the interludes in the last act supposed to take place in some sort of afterlife? Who the hell knows. Christensen and Alba are both terrible actors, though the latter has a nice moment late in the film that I can't really describe without giving away the ending. Oh well. Probably doesn't work in any way that a reasonable moviegoer would appreciate, but I can't be too hard on anything this bizarre.

Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007) - C+

Cops out like whoa -- sets up a terrific prototypical fairy tale universe, with a maiden whose singing voice calls to action a platoon of helpful woodland creatures and who yearns only for "true love's kiss," an egotistical Prince, an evil witch wielding poison apples, an eager-to-please chipmunk sidekick, etc., but then can't bring itself to skewer it properly, preferring instead to insist in all sincerity that our world should be more like a storybook. Should have been funnier; I'm not sure there's much use for a movie where Patrick Dempsey finds true love with a fairy tale princess, but there could have been room for it in the context of an actual comedy, something like a live-action Shrek. Amy Adams is awesome, there are a few amusing moments, and the big musical number is surprisingly dynamic and rousing, but the tacked-on final fifteen minutes involving a truly pointless CGI dragon sealed the thumbs-down.