Prince and Me, The
Rental with Snacks
It's a movie, people. Exactly the kind of movie that gets made for
people who love the kind of love story that only happens in movies.
The kind of movie a gal needs for swooning over tremble-inducing
forearms, drool-inducing accents, impeccable manners, and
hypnotically focused interest in our heroine. (For a perfect
example, see Kate and Leopold.) The surprises are few, thanks to the
preview and to the formula, yet there are some, but the obstacles are
fewer, which is my only real complaint.
Our leading couple (Julia Stiles and Luke Mably) have terrific
chemistry, easy-to-negotiate situations to master, and the smoothest
journey to love since I can't remember when. It's Mably's fish out
of water fumblings with minimum wage society that you really
appreciate. Despite being one of the oldest (and most reliable to
make an invincible hero seem accessible) narrative techniques in the
book, it's much less "seen it!" than you might think. He imbues his
Prince Charming (aka Eddie) with more layers than the screenwriters
seemed to want to entrust him with. Stiles has already proven that
she has the power to make a flat character interesting, and together
they transcend their material. He is much more interesting than the
Ken dolls that such films want to foist on the giddy girls sharing
popcorn in the dark, and she is genuinely wrestling with major life
choices, as all modern gals do. We wrestle with the contradicting
dreams of self-reliance and goals and careers, and the secret
romantic dream (that keeps the romance novel, romantic comedy, and
chick-lit industries pumping so quit being closeted about it, gals)
of the handsome prince, wild romantic love, and doting servants.
No one could blame her, really, for making any choice; as presented,
the life she led before meeting him and the life she could have with
Edvard both involve a lot of hard work and a lot of happiness. Which
happiness should she choose? Which challenges? Maybe we don't all
get the chance to make these choices, but they make them weightier
than the genre would suggest as well. It's not The Princess Diaries
or Cinderella, though it looks like that in the preview, and it is
still a beautiful and simplistic fantasy where 21 year olds make huge
decisions and behave honorably and so on, but it would be unfair to
skip this movie altogether just based on the assumption that it's
another sell-out Barbie movie.
Ben Miller as Eddie's chamberlain Soren and Miranda Richardson as
Queen Rosalind lend comedic timing and acting gravitas to the film.
Soren's presence is so bizarre and so poorly integrated that it
works. Stiles' character has great girlfriends, Denmark (OK and
Prague) have some beautiful locations, the music is great, and there
are some really well-orchestrated moments that have all the oomph of
the more mature romantic comedies that have gone on to be classics.
I am not sure if this one has the legs, but it certainly has the abs.
Rent it with your best girlfriends on a blustery spring afternoon.
And oh my word, that Luke Mably is *hot.*
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These reviews (c) 2004 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to
forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can
check out previous reviews at:
http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the
Online Film Critics Society
http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock
Exchange Brokerage Resource
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37562 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1271435 X-RT-TitleID: 1131162 X-RT-SourceID: 755 X-RT-AuthorID: 3661 X-RT-RatingText: 3.5/5
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