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Friday, August 3, 2001
Review: The Princess Diaries a precious happy-ever-after story
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun
The Princess Diaries is a teen girl's Disney dream. One day, our hapless heroine is moping about school as the super-geek, ignored by the callow boys she idolizes, insulted by the cool girls who are too ignorant to appreciate her qualities, and befriended only by other eccentrics whom the bitchy insiders think are total losers.
The next day, she finds out she is a princess and the heir to the throne of an obscure European country called Genovia. Suddenly, with her newfound notoriety, our heroine becomes the most popular teen in the school.
When she gets a royal make-over -- dropping the big-haired geek look for a more sleek supermodel style -- she also becomes her school's hottest babe. Or so the boys think.
Not surprisingly, this is a Disney movie and it is bursting with Disneyesque cliches.
It also stars the ever-regal Julie Andrews as the Queen of Genovia, a woman seeking her long-lost granddaughter to try to persuade her to claim her rightful status.
With her dignity intact, her voice restored and her beauty glowing, Andrews helps transform a soft idea into something with a bit of style.
It also helps that the fresh-faced Anne Hathaway (from last year's Fox TV series Get Real) is believable in the geek-princess role. The only irony is that she is a lot more attractive as the geek than she is after her make-over -- but the boys in the movie seem to disagree.
Director Garry Marshall has also assembled a decent cast of support players including the gifted Hector Elizondo (as the Genovian Queen's driver and the princess' mentor), Caroline Goodall (as the princess' bohemian artist mom), Heather Matarazzo (as the princess' quirky best friend) and Robert Schwartzman (as the bashful boyfriend).
Marshall, however, wastes talents such as Sandra Oh, who has an awkward cameo as the San Francisco school's headmistress. As a director, Marshall also wastes our time with pointless scenes. A running time of 117 minutes is way too long for a movie so light and girlishly giddy as this one.
Nevertheless, The Princess Diaries does raise a lot of decent if familiar themes, exploring teen self-awareness, self-consciousness, friendship, ego and the like. The movie, written by Gina Wendkos and based on the Meg Cabot novel, doesn't explore those themes very deeply but there is a nice, safe, Disney patina to the proceedings.
The movie, which is aimed precisely at young girls, hits its target and does so with enough good grace, innocent romance and soft humour that parents need not be afraid to send their daughters off to the cinema.
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