Enchanted... or not

My favorite childhood movie was Sleeping Beauty. Sitting in the dark movie theatre, I remember being transported (and this was way before Star Trek days) to another world. I bought into the chipmunks and bluebirds who harmonized alongside the beautiful maiden with the voice of a 35-year-old.

There were no weeds or dripping moss in the forest, only a willing owl to dance until the prince wandered onto the scene. The witch was thoroughly evil, the prince pure to his toenails. Tue love’s kiss won out in the end and everyone lived happily ever after.

If you hung on the Disney fantasies, you ought to check out their new movie, Enchanted. Just the park scene, where Giselle enlists a wedding group and construction workers to a song-and-dance, will stir your heart – or your laughter.

But just like Giselle met Robert, who had both feet planted in reality, so I have a 12-year-old son who tagged along to see Enchanted, which is a consummate chick flick. He didn’t get it.

What a shock.

But he did insist on watching Sleeping Beauty, to get some context. Or to get out of some schoolwork. I’m still not sure which.

He wasn’t two minutes into the movie, where the camera pans across the beautiful green kingdom before zooming in on the massive castle, when his commentary began. “Who’d watch this?” he asked. He was especially disgusted with Prince Phillip abandoning his betrothed for a girl he met in the forest. “He doesn’t even know her!” he snorted. Informed that I had first seen this movie at his very age (thinking this would connect somehow), he said, “How old is this movie anyway?”

I keep thinking that his someday wife will appreciate the fact that he’s been around chick flicks and dreamy-eyed women.

We read Ephesians 6 this week, where it tells husbands to be like Christ to their wives, and my son thinks those are better pointers for him than can be found in Sleeping Beauty and Enchanted. Maybe I am making progress?