 Amy Adams herself garnered many favorable reviews . Reviewers praised her singing ability and asserted that her performance , which was compared by some to her Academy Award @-@ nominated performance in Junebug , has made Adams a movie star , likening it to Mary Poppins ' effect on Julie Andrews ' career . Similarly , film critics Richard Roeper and Michael Phillips , who gave the film positive reviews on At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper , emphasized the effect of Adams ' performance on the film with remarks like " Amy Adams is this movie " and " Amy Adams shows how to make a comic cliché work like magic . " However , both agreed that the final sequence involving the computer @-@ generated dragon " bogged down " the film . 
