BY BOB STRAUSS >FILM CRITIC

Team Disney makes good fun of itself with "Enchanted." But not so much to subvert the viability of the conglomerate's princess cash cow.

A combination of traditional animation and live action, "Enchanted" works a killer fish-out-of-water concept. What if one of the studio's romantic and ultra-innocent princesses fell out of her cartoon world into the reality of coldhearted Manhattan?

Director Kevin Lima ("Tarzan," "102 Dalmatians") and screenwriter Bill Kelly ("Premonition") imagineer the idea slickly and sometimes too animatronically (to use a few Disney buzzwords). But they also get a real, tough emotion or two into the mix, as well as a lot of good laughs.

They were also smart enough to cast Amy Adams, with her rare gift for filling caricatures with vibrant humanity ("Junebug," "Talladega Nights"), as the wayward, two-dimensional heroine Giselle.

In her cartoon world, Giselle lives with a menagerie of talking animals whom she sings to about her dream of marrying a prince (the veteran Disney music team of Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz provided the witty, exaggeratedly naive ditties).

But on the day of her dream come true, Giselle is sent through a dimension-spanning portal by her beloved Prince Edward's evil stepmother Narissa. Climbing out of a Times Square manhole, the now-flesh-and-blood Giselle wanders New York in confusion until she's taken in by Robert (Patrick Dempsey), a romantically cynical divorce lawyer, and the adorable daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey), he's raising alone.

While Robert is wondering just what asylum Giselle should be returned to, dumb, gallant Edward (James Marsden) comes to Earth looking for her. So does his servant Nathaniel (an uproarious, disguise-happy Timothy Spall), who's secretly in league with Narissa.

Then, finally, the sorceress/monster-in-law Narissa herself (Susan Sarandon, slicing generous chunks of ham).

The pure 2-D sequences are lovingly rendered and gleefully reference previous Disney cartoon classics. Both hand-drawn and CG animation is well deployed amid the live footage, where the contrast between worlds is cleverly encapsulated by Giselle's conversion of rats, pigeons and roaches into excellent housekeepers.

Another smart move was to emphasize Robert and Giselle's diametrically opposed views on love. To put it simply, hers is impossibly idealized, and his is practical to a paralyzing, unrewarding extent. But while she can get all of Central Park dancing to a reggae dream of happiness, she doesn't entirely win this debate. Disney's not about to undercut little girls' happily-ever-

after ideas, but give the corporation credit for acknowledging that relationships can't thrive without some compromise.

Then again, the studio that made so much with that less-defensible urban fairy tale, "Pretty Woman," makes sure "Enchanted" pushes all the proven popularity buttons.

Disney may have permitted more real-world grit than usual into this princess tale, but the studio stopped well short of confronting every questionable truth about its formulaic magic.

Bob Strauss, (818) 713-3670 bob.strauss@dailynews.com

review>

ENCHANTED

>PG: violence.
>Starring: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Timothy Spall, Susan Sarandon, Rachel Covey, Idina Menzel.
>Director: Kevin Lima.
>Running time: 1 hr. 47 min.
>Playing: Area wide.
>In a nutshell: Disney satirizes its own princess megabusiness - but still goes for the standard payoffs - with this funny story of a fairy-tale heroine who finds herself in real-life New York City.