At a party last night a guy who usually knows what he’s talking about told me to forget Amy Adams as a Best Actress contender in Enchanted (Disney, 11.21). Not to be mean or dismissive toward Adams, who’s always very winning whatever the role, but because the film holds back too much — it reeks of too much caution and timidity and wanting to keep things “safe.”

In other words, it’s not enough to be “really good” in a part. The film you’re part of has to at least aspire to being an award-level thing also. It doesn’t have to succeed magnificently in this effort, but it has to at least try. And all bets are off if the movie is some calculated family confection, especially if it’s from Disney, which is out of the game anyway since cutting Nina Jacobson loose and deciding to be a family-friendly movie studio.