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Enchanted [Disney D000092502]
Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, both, know their way around enchanted songs for fantastical adventures. Their recent assignment — five tunes for the newest Disney film, mixing princesses and princes both real and animated — is the sort of thing one suspects they can toss off in the course of a lazy afternoon with the TV playing in the background. That's a bit of an exaggeration, perhaps; but this kind of assignment, at this point in their separate careers, can't be all that challenging. Which makes it all the more heartening to report that Menken and Schwartz have lavished ingenuity, humor and skill on their songs for "Enchanted." This Disney outing is in some ways a 21st-century take on Walt's patented formula; call it "Snow White of Riverside Drive." The viewpoint is very much buoyed by the work of the songwriters, without whose efforts the film might not work half so well.

Mr. Schwartz is well-known along Broadway. He made his name with Godspell, moved to the big-time with Pippin, and — after a 30-year exile of sorts — returned with Wicked (which has turned into a far bigger hit than his previous musicals, or just about anyone else's either). Mr. Menken has had a more puzzling career, Broadway-wise. Beauty and the Beast enjoyed a long and impressive run, and The Little Mermaid is just now casting anchor at the Lunt-Fontanne. But these are transplants from the screen. Given Menken's talent and his Off-Broadway roots (including Little Shop of Horrors), one keeps expecting him to turn up with a pert new Broadway musical. Maybe next year?

Menken and Schwartz have met before, courtesy of Disney. Following the early death of collaborator Howard Ashman and assignments with the likes of Tim Rice and Lynn Ahrens, Menken seems to have had the good sense to draft Schwartz for the 1995 animated feature "Pocahontas." This was followed a year later by "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." (The latter, like "Beauty and the Beast," was transformed by Disney for the musical stage, albeit far from Shubert Alley. The show opened in Berlin in 1999, but at present seems to be stored in a turret of Cinderella's castle.)

The princess in question, by the by, is someone named Amy Adams. We shan't compare her to Julie Andrews, who played that Poppins woman on the screen for Disney, but Adams is quite a find. Director Kevin Lima displays a sense of humor by casting not only Andrews but Jodi Benson, Judy Kuhn and Paige O'Hara, each of whom voiced heroines of prior Disney/Menken movies. None of these four sing in "Enchanted," though; neither does Idina Menzel, Tony Award-winning star of Schwartz's Wicked, who plays one of the villainesses. Nor does leading man Patrick Dempsey, for that matter. Male vocal honors go to James Marsden, who — as the cartoon prince — does a nifty job on the romantic duet with Adams. As an added joke in this whimsically jokey movie, Marsden dusts off Jack Brooks and Harry Warren's "That's Amore" for the end-titles.

Most of the "Enchanted" CD consists of Menken's score for the non-singing parts of the film, which is pretty good, too. Alan has eight Oscars at present, and seems well positioned to add a couple more next spring. Continued...