Enchanted is a film produced in 2007 by Walt Disney Pictures and it's gross in the box office was $127,706,877 making it the 82nd highest grossing Disney Film. The 81 movies ahead of it are all well-known titles and most of the Disney films produced in the last ten years profited higher.
Giselle (Amy Adams) who is the princess in Enchanted isn't a character at Disneyland. This could be argued that it's because Giselle is a live-action character instead of an animated one but that doesn't stop characters like Mary Poppins and Bert (Mary Poppins), Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean), and Star Wars characters to appear.
Disney never granted Giselle the Disney princess title and she remained a mere female Disney character like her counterparts Jane (Tarzan), Meg (Hercules), and Kida (Atlantis). Not every Disney female exudes the criteria for a Disney princess, but Giselle is bubbly, naïve, and wants to find her true love which is a classic Disney formula.
Some say numbers don't lie and the success of films could be directly related to the profits of the film. However, I think Enchanted deserves more credit and higher ranking despite it's 82nd place grossing and ignoring by Disney.
Even though Giselle seems like a typical Disney princess (though she isn't titled as such), Enchanted skewed the tropes of fairytale happily ever after love storylines. This may not seem that original now but this film came out before Brave and Frozen and Moana where there are also princesses defying gender roles and damsel in distress tropes.
Enchanted in some ways satirizes the typical Disney experience and fairytale. Although Giselle is very Disney princess-like, she's also almost a Disney princess to the extreme and trivializes the Disney princess. Then she is placed in a dirty, bustling, live-action New York City where you can't survive acting the way she does.
Giselle also questions in her song That's How You Know, how you know if someone loves you and that love can sometimes be actions and not just words. She thinks that it's important to be clear when you love someone that you love them with little things you do and not take them for granted. This is something that everyone should pay attention to and understand what it means when someone really loves you and how you should treat the people you love.
Enchanted also shows that love doesn't always work out. Even though Giselle had mostly a happy ending, even if it wasn't the one she thought she'd have, Jon McLaughlin's So Close embodies the idea that some romances aren't meant to be. It's easy to pretend and fall into the romance of a relationship but not every couple is meant to be together.
Maybe breaking the Disney narrative is why Giselle turns out to not be a Disney princess, but we know more and more characters are doing this as well. Enchanted simply isn't getting the recognition that other Disney movies get for similar storylines. Enchanted is a fun, whimsical, Romantic Comedy but I think it can be enjoyed by all ages. Move aside, Elsa, because Giselle is my favorite princess.
And seriously, what Disney male love interest is dreamier than Patrick Dempsey?
