Some "Enchanted" Adams

At a moment that finds the film industry in a bout of public hand wringing over the (un)bankability of female leads, Amy Adams may be the answer to a few prayers. Nobody's praying harder than Disney, who are deploying her (trailer here) as the energetic and exceedingly watchable ingenue in their Enchanted, a film that's meant both to summarize a lifetime of Disney movies and more to the point, set the studio up with an ongoing franchise.

The film, out wide November 21, begins in a 2D cartoon world where her fiance' (James Marsden) is under the thumb of cruel Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon, channeling Ann Coulter); the characters soon tumble into the alien world of Manhattan (somewhat more sparkly-clean than you may recall) and meet up with single-dad divorce lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey).

Adams fetches up on the mean streets all dewy-eyed and in search of a magic first kiss; Dempsey's character is disgruntled, and downbeat. As director Kevin Lima puts it:

They both go through a transformation. She literally starts as a two-dimensional person, both physically and emotionally, with that Snow White viewpoint of the world, that `happy ever after' happens with your first kiss.

Patrick is the complete opposite; he is purely three-dimensional and he has lived in a world of pain. And his transformation comes from the fact that he meets this woman who is incredibly positive, who brings him back to life, and gives him a sense that happily ever after can exist and it may not happen the way you think it's going to happen, but it can happen in the real world.

"It's a love letter to Disney and all their characters," says Dempsey, "And they've all been brought together and put into this one movie. It's a romantic comedy. At the same time, it's a cartoon. It's a musical. It's like a Bollywood musical in some respects. But it's fun. You can take your kids to go see it and you can escape the world that we live in for two hours and live in a fantasy world."

If Dempsey is the audience's point of view, Adams is who we watch. She holds the screen with the elan of a Broadway vet by letting Giselle gamely blunder along wide-eyed and almost unshakably upbeat. ("You have a lovely smile," she tells a nearly toothless panhandler just before he steals her tiara). When she breaks into song (and dance) in Central Park, so do 150 passers-by, while Robert gapes.

Dempsey had Adams at hello with his gentlemanly comportment when she had to repeatedly flash him (albeit with strategically placed cover-ups) in a shower scene on their first day's work. "He became my hero on set...and a perfect partner for a comedy. I'd love to see him do something dark. Because the range is there and you see whispers of it."

Dempsey goes a bit further than the inevitable return of compliments: "She has an incredible depth to her as an individual, and and I think that translates when you see her work. You see her ability as a dancer and singer, but also her her heart and her comic sensibility. It's a complex character that she really brings to life beautifully."

For Adams, who was raised in Colorado and trained for the stage, Enchanted was a homecoming to a place she's never been: "Originally, I started in musical theater. I was going to go to New York rather than Los Angeles to pursue that, then decided to come to Los Angeles--which tends to sort of rule that out."

Though she won her first major acclaim (and a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination) in the thoroughly indie June Bug, she's ranged around since (i.e., Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny) and sees no severing from her indie cred: "Enchanted has such commercial elements, but there's so much of it that's intelligent and subversive that I think an indie film audience would actually really love it. I feel I've stayed true to what I set out to do."

Adams gives Dempsey credit for being the straight man--and advises keeping an eye for his dance moves seconds before the final credits roll. Meanwhile, Adams satisfies throughout, twirling fetchingly through the grit in her character's self-sewn gowns and nailing her musical numbers but more importantly, layering in Giselle's growing worldliness without losing the essential sweetness. The early, if not premature Oscar talk comes from her added dimension of awakening sensibilities and eroding but unquenchable innocence. As Adams says of the moment where Giselle is experimentally putting a hand to Robert's chest hair, "She's discovering her senses in that moment. She discovers food, she discovers sound, she discovers discomfort--all these things that don't exist in that same way where she came from."

Though she's trailing the fumes of some great comediennes and song and dance gals--in film musical terms she's more Debbie Reynolds than Audrey Hepburn, more Marilyn Monroe than Judy Garland--she's really doing something that feels quite fresh and yet rooted in America's love affair with performers who will go hard or go home. After smooching Leo Dicaprio in 2002's Catch Me If You Can, she 'll be unveiled on December 25 playing an aide to Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson's War--an invented character cast in a true-life saga, which should tell us something. If a supposed studio quota for female leads slows her down, it won't stop her--Adams has moxie. Interviewed by Selma Blair, she congratulated Rachel McAdams for dodging the nude Vanity Fair cover array--"I tip my hat to Rachel and her self-knowledge... she knows herself and what she's comfortable with. That's a beautiful thing for a young actress." With that kind of certitude, Adams is looking like not just a potential Oscar nominee but possibly the industry's--and the artistry's--great female hope.

(Photo: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey)