one enchanted tranny

It's been an odd weekend.
The BF wasn't feeling so hot Friday night, so we stayed in and surrendered ourselves to the vast Cable Wastelands. Flipping through the flotsam of the upper pay channels, I landed on the opening credits for Ella Enchanted, the 2004 Anne Hathaway fantasy. Now, a normal person would have fled immediately to the safe waters of Bravo or DVR, but not me.
I've written before about how Anne captivated me in Brokeback Mountain, and I was curious to see how she handled her so-called "tiara flicks." Plus, the BF and I recently saw Anne speak at the HRC Gala, and she came off as a spaz. So I stayed up and watched the whole darn picture. Which was, to be blunt, astoundingly bad.

Saturday we took in a very different slice of cinema, Transamerica, also the subject of a previous post here about tranny road pictures. I went in with low expectations, having been disappointed by Breakfast on Pluto and, oh, almost every other gay movie ever made. But this film moved me in many unexpected ways. Felicity Huffman simply rocks. Her performance as Bree Osbourne, an uptight, neurotic transgendered woman on the verge of her final surgery, just about drips with verisimilitude — no small feat, considering she's not a man. The Oscar nod was certainly deserved.

Later on, while digesting these wildly different films, I realized that Ella Enchanted and Transamerica are almost the same movie.
Granted, Trans is a film filled with grace and dignity — qualities lacking in Ella, which gleefully aims for the lowest common denominator. But there are some archetypical underpinnings that should be discussed. In point:

THE PLIGHT:
Ella is a girl with the misfortune of having received a troublesome gift at birth, a magical curse of obedience.

Bree is a girl with the misfortune of having received a troublesome gift at birth, a penis.

THE PLOT:
Eager to shed her curse, Ella sets off on a cross-kingdom quest to find the fairy who can remove the spell.

Eager to shed her penis, Bree sets off on a cross-country quest with a fairy who may be her son.

THE FAMILY:
Ella's household includes an evil stepmother and kindly but bumbling father, along with an impotent house fairy (Minnie Driver! WTF?) who acts as a pseudo sister.

Bree's household, when finally shown, includes an (almost) evil mother and kindly but bumbling father, along with a mostly worthless sister.


THE EYE CANDY:
Hottie Hugh Dancy, who teaches Ella to follow her heart, yet still manages to lose his shirt in the process.

Cutey Kevin Zeggers, who teaches Bree not to be such a prude, yet still manages to get naked three times in the process.

THE MORAL:
For both: Only you can rise above your own unfortunate circumstances, and then only by showing a selfless concern for the safety of others.

CAREER IMPACT:
Felicity Huffman shows she's got more chops than your average Desperate Houswife, and deserves to win an Oscar for doing so.

Anne Hathaway, meanwhile, eventually graduates from playing only princesses — though I'm guessing she'll be a bitter queen when that bitch Michelle Williams takes home the Best Supporting Actress gold.