Early reviews suggest that James Marsden is the best of a pretty fierce cast in Disney's upcoming flick, Enchanted. Best known for playing the married and harried Cyclops in the X-Men movies, Marsden works his comedy chops in the hybrid live-action/animated flick and, if some reports are to be believed, just about steals the show from stars Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey.
James Marden as Prince Edward
Unlike Rupert Everett in the Shrek series or Patrick Warburton in Happily N'Ever After, Marsden doesn't present his Prince Charming as villain or arrogant buffoon. Instead, he treats his Prince Edward as a heroic figure who finds himself out of his depth in present-day New York City.
"I guess they're calling it "a modern-day fairy tale,'" Marsden tells Disney Insider. "It begins in the animated world, much like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella -- the Disney classics.
"And then these characters get thrust into modern-day New York City. The movie is a mixture of traditional 2-D animation and live action. Our princess is stumbling around the streets of New York, trying to get back to her fairy-tale land. I play the prince who she was going to marry, and I go into the real world to find her and bring her back."
Hot Prince
Marsden claims the novelty of his prince outfit wore off quickly, especially during the muggy New York summer.
"I'm running around New York and jumping on and off of buses and running over bridges in Central Park, and it got a little taxing once the role required the athleticism," he says. "And doing the whole ball sequence -- it was HOT in there, and that was the hardest thing for me. But once you enter the real world of New York, you're not supposed to look perfect -- you're supposed to sweat, you're supposed to trip over your prince costume, that's sort of the fun of the movie!"
Not surprisingly, Marsden had little to do with the animation side of Enchanted.
"All I did was lend my voice to the animation, which was just a few hours of work before they began animating," he says. "Beyond that, I guess they had photos of me in the prince suit and the animators were creating this character to look like an animated version of me. I prefer the way I look in the animation to the way I look in real life! They really did it right."
Even though Marsden's getting a large chunk of the early praise for Enchanted, one review was crucial to him: that of his six-year-old son. However, there was one scene that his kid truly enjoyed.
"He liked seeing me fall on my face in Central Park and get run over by bikes, I think that was his favorite part!"
You can read the whole interview over here.
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