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Film review
The same old 'Story'
If you're expecting Hilary Duff's new movie to deliver a twist on the Cinderella tale - or on teen romantic comedies, for that matter - think again.
By PHILIP BOOTH
Published July 15, 2004
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[Photo: Warner Bros.]
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Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray star in A Cinderella Story.
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Everything old is old again in A Cinderella Story, a Hilary Duff vehicle that's every bit as fresh and memorable as last week's tweener-aimed teen romance movie. The new spin: This one attempts to pass itself off as an inspired update of a classic fairy tale. It's all as artificial as the castle inside one character's snow globe.
Mark Rosman, a director of television's Lizzie McGuire, starring 16-year-old Duff, has churned out a TV-like feature that asks viewers to accept a world where flesh-and-blood types coexist with human cartoons. The mix is uncomfortable and ultimately unwieldy.
Sam (Duff), a fresh-scrubbed nice girl, once experienced an idyllic life with her dad, a handsome, loving single father and diner owner, in the San Fernando Valley. One earthquake and eight years later, she's stuck living in the attic and attending to the every whim of Fiona (Jennifer Coolidge, wasted in this role), a cartoon caricature of a cruel stepmother.
Between botox treatments and liposuction procedures, Fiona finds time to emotionally abuse her stepdaughter and make her life a living hell. Sam is also forced to put up with the taunts and manipulations of a couple of jealous weirdo stepsisters, Brianna (Madeline Zima) and Gabriella (Andrea Avery). Sam's only friends, her real "family," are her goofy best friend, Carter (Dan Byrd), and her co-workers at the diner once owned and operated by her father.
Enter the story's Prince Charming, Austin Ames (Chad Michael Murray), the dashing quarterback for the high school football team, named, not coincidentally, the Fighting Frogs. Sam and Austin, in a nod to You've Got Mail, are carrying on a passionate e-mail and text-messaging relationship but obscuring their true identities. When crossing paths in "real" life, they fail to recognize each other as cyberspace pals. More "Cinderella" touches: She must be back at work by midnight on the evening of the big dance, and she leaves an object behind while rushing to make her deadline.
The biggest gambit of Rosman and rookie screenwriter Leigh Dunlap is the suggestion that Austin, having seen Sam on the dance floor, wearing a white mask and an elegant white gown, can't recognize her as the same girl he has seen at Fiona's Diner and in the hallways.
He's either far too dim for a Princeton-bound kid or the filmmakers have failed to make viewers accept a central conceit of the movie. I'd go with the latter explanation.
A Cinderella Story
Grade: C-
Director: Mark Rosman
Cast: Hilary Duff, Jennifer Coolidge, Chad Michael Murray, Dan Byrd, Regina King, Julie Gonzalo
Screenplay: Leigh Dunlap
Rating: PG; mild language and innuendo
Running time: 95 mins.
[Last modified July 14, 2004, 12:20:26]
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