Enchanted | 2007
- Locations |
- New York
- DIRECTOR |
- Kevin Lima
Disney's jolly fantasy sees inhabitants of the enchanted realm of Andalasia finding themselves thrust into a place where there are no happily ever afters. New York. Of course.
Brightly innocent Giselle (Amy Adams) is pushed by the wicked Queen (Susan Sarandon) down an Andalasian well to find herself, in full wedding gown, popping up through a manhole in the middle of Times Square.
Hustled into the subway system, Giselle exits from Bowery Station on Delancey Street, east of Bowery. New York is made to look especially grungy as she finds herself on Howard Street between Broadway and Mercer Street in SoHo. It’s not quite that bad – the graffiti-covered building on the steps of which the old wino steals Giselle's tiara is now the Agnes B boutique, 50 Howard Street.
As she chases the thief on Mercer Street, you can see the home of Sonny Colfax (Adam Sandler) from Big Daddy behind her. She could have knocked on Sonny's door, but we'd have been in for a whole different film.
There's another near-crossover moment as Giselle spots the sparkly illuminated billboard for 'The Castle Casino' and thinks she's found an enchanted palace. The ad was erected on the empty lot at the corner of North Moore Street and West Broadway in Tribeca.
This is where the diner was built for 1994 Nicolas Cage-Bridget Fonda romcom It Could Happen To You and also the gas station, site of the unfortunate forecourt fight in Zoolander.
Not enough? Well, as cynical divorce lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey) arrives with his daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey), they've just driven past the firestation from Ghostbusters on North Moore Street.
Unfortunately, this enchanted lot has finally been built on.
Once Giselle falls onto Robert, her luck begins to change when he reluctantly invites her back to his Upper West Side apartment block, with its capacious entrance – which is just where he say it is, 440 Riverside Drive at West 116th Street.
His office is in the Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, with its enormous glass-fronted atrium. The two towers of the Center became the damaged apartment block in Matt Reeves' Cloverfield.
Sending her minion, Nathaniel (Timothy Spall), to prevent Giselle hooking up with her son Prince Edward (James Marsden), the Queen appears in a vat of soup in the kitchen of Katz's Delicatessen, 205 East Houston Street at Ludlow Street in the East Village, with an array of poisoned red apples. Katz's is, of course, famous on-screen for Meg Ryan’s faked climax in When Harry Met Sally… and also appears in the underrated Donnie Brasco with Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.
Nathaniel sends Edward off on a wild goose chase from the foot of the USS Maine National Monument, at the Merchants' Gate entrance to Central Park, across from the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, while Robert follows the naively vulnerable Giselle into Central Park itself.
Giselle, as she does, bursts into a joyous Alan Menken-Stephen Schwartz number – only to be joined by the crowds in the Park.
That’s How You Know begins alongside the Park’s Conservatory Water, and the greenery covered Gapstow Bridge, continues through the kitschy wooden Central Park Dairy at 65th Street to the Naumberg Bandshell, familiar from Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite and Milos Forman's film of the musical Hair.
Edward meanwhile falls onto a clutch of cyclists from the extravagant art nouveau swirls of the Reservoir Bridge, up at West 94th Street.
The joyful crowd dances across the graceful Bow Bridge (this one's in Highlander) at 74th Street, before arriving for the big climax at the fountain of Bethesda Terrace.
Trying out the exciting new novelty of a ‘date’, Giselle and Edward stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge, where Giselle reveals she wants to go to the Kings & Queens Ball.
Robert’s young daughter Morgan is keen to help get Giselle kitted out in style – with the help of her father’s credit card.
The pair shops at a couple of upscale (naturally) women's stores in Soho: Calypso Christiane Celle, now Calypso St Barth, 191 Lafayette Street, and Elie Tahari, 417 West Broadway at Prince Street.
The Kings and Queens Ball is a golden deco studio set, but it’s supposedly being held in the Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway, atop which the climactic battle takes place. The Woolworth is not open to the general public, but you can tour the landmark building's famous Lobby.
