Godmothered on Disney+

By Erin

Disney’s “Godmothered” is an all-new magical Christmas comedy in the classic Disney tradition, starring Jillian Bell and Isla Fisher.

Disney+ has a new sweet, sugary Christmas movie premiering on December 4th, “Godmothered.” Set at Christmas time, “Godmothered” is a comedy about Eleanor, a young, inexperienced fairy godmother- in-training (Bell) who upon hearing that her chosen profession is facing extinction, decides to show the world that people still need fairy godmothers. Finding a mislaid letter from a 10-year-old girl in distress, Eleanor tracks her down and discovers that the girl, Mackenzie, is now a 40-year-old single mom (Fisher) working at a news station in Boston. Having lost her husband several years earlier, Mackenzie has all but given up on the idea of “happily ever after,” but Eleanor is bound and determined to give Mackenzie a happiness makeover, whether she likes it or not.

“Godmothered” also stars Santiago Cabrera, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Jane Curtin, June Squibb, Jillian Shea Spaeder, Willa Skye, Artemis Pebdani, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Stephnie Weir.

“Godmothered” is Directed by Sharon Maguire and Produced by Justin Springer. Diane L. Sabatini, Tom Pollock, Ivan Reitman and Amie Karp serve as the film’s Executive Producers.

This is a hilarious Christmas comedy that turns the traditional fairytale completely upsidedown. When an offbeat fairy godmother forces herself on a reluctant human protégé, they’ll both discover life isn’t as simple as “happily ever after.” Fantasy faces a hard reality in Disney’s “Godmothered”, as they learn that “happily ever after” doesn’t mean the same thing for everything and it doesn’t mean you have to fall in love with some prince charming.

Eleanor is an apprentice fairy godmother, highly enthusiastic and eager to learn the tricks of the trade, but not quite there yet. All her life she has lived in The Motherland, the Gothic fantasy other-world where fairy godmothers come from and where they are raised and trained and have existed for a thousand years. There, she has been taught by her imperious headmistress Moira (Emmy winner Jane Curtin), who literally wrote the book on “godmothering,” all the very traditional fairy tale notions of what girls aspire to—going to balls in beautiful gowns, marrying Prince Charming and also things like turning pumpkins into carriages and mice into footmen.

Mackenzie is a world-weary widow who lives in Boston with her daughters Jane (Jillian Shea Spaeder) and Mia (Willa Skye) and is exhausted from trying to juggle all the responsibilities of motherhood with a high pressure and mostly unrewarding job on the number four local news program. After her husband was killed in a car crash four years ago, she’s closed herself off from any dreams of romance or happiness and has just focused on getting through the day. With babysitting help from her sister Paula (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), Mackenzie has tried her best to raise her daughters to be as pragmatic as she is about what life has to offer.

Eleanor’s and Mackenzie’s worlds collide one day when, due to a lack of demand for fairy godmothers, The Motherland is in great danger of shutting down, with everyone to be retrained as tooth fairies. Desperate to find something that will validate the need for fairy godmothers to continue to exist, Eleanor finds a letter from Mackenzie asking for help, unaware that she sent it decades ago. With the help of her roommate, Agnes (Oscar® nominee June Squibb), Eleanor is transported from The Motherland to 21st century Boston, in order to find Mackenzie and use what she has learned from Moira to bring happiness to her life.

The woefully naïve fairy godmother expects to find things perfectly situated as you might in a typical fairytale story. But instead, she runs right into the wall that is Boston in the present day. A lot of the comedy is just her trying to make sense of today’s world.

There’s conflict between Eleanor’s expectations and what she thinks being a fairy godmother and what she thinks magic is like. But then when she’s confronted with the real world, all her expectations come crashing down in a hilarious way.

It’s filled with magic: wands, fairy godmothers and woodland creatures, but we also get to subvert that legacy for comedy. Eleanor is untrained in magic, so none of her spells go according to plan and Happily Ever After is delivered in a very different way than we’ve come to expect in previous Disney movies.

From her first encounter with the much-older-than-she-expected Mackenzie, it is evident that this assignment is not going to be easy for Eleanor. Their differences make them a comically unharmonious odd couple, a recipe for laughs galore.

From her first encounter with the much-older-than-she-expected Mackenzie, it is evident that this assignment is not going to be easy for Eleanor. Their differences make them a comically unharmonious odd couple, a recipe for laughs in a buddy comedy.

Sweet, sugary, naïve Eleanor runs into this cynical kind of pragmatic woman who’s lost her belief in magic. She started as a young girl who believed in fairy godmothers and magic and all that could be. But life has worn that down for her and she no longer prioritizes her own happiness. She’s not worried about finding her Prince Charming, she’s just pragmatically trying to make it through things. Eleanor is trying to nudge her in the direction of following a formula to become ‘happily ever after’ when Mackenzie’s not really looking for that.

This is such a heartwarming film, filled with great messages of hope, self-discovery and believing in yourself with lots of laughs along the way. That the true meaning of ‘Happily Ever After” isn’t what we’ve all grown up to think it means in fairy tales. “Godmothered” is a great uplifting film to watch during this holiday season on Disney+!