First shot of animation: Push in on the Andalasia castle, through the town and forest, into a storybook, in a combination of the most common openings, pushed to excess.

Maybe the biggest criticism of fairy tales that Enchanted didn’t touch on is “what comes after Happily Ever After?”. Fifteen years later they got around to it. Where in Enchanted “fairy tales” meant a naive and endearing enthusiasm and directness, here it’s a collection of cliches. And Patrick Dempsey is no James Marsden when it’s time to play them.

Turning reality into a cartoon makes this feel more like a Halloweentown spin-off than an Enchanted sequel, down to a resolution involving dueling particle colors and the bylaws of spells. I liked when they were moving in and the wires caught fire, that was fun to watch.

Maybe it was a mistake to watch this the same day as John Wick 4.