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'Princess' A Rarity: A Fun, Entertaining 'G' Movie
submitted by: Lisa D.
source: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Date: August 3, 2001
By WILLIAM ARNOLD, P-I movie critic
It's a sad fact of Hollywood life that most big-budget films are, in one way or another, designed to pander to the fantasies and tastes of boys 13 years old and younger - who are thought to drive the theatrical movie business.
But Disney's "The Princess Diaries" goes the other way. It's clearly designed to pander to the fantasies and tastes of that woefully neglected portion of the audience: girls 13 years old and younger. It further flies in the face of convention by being incorrigibly clean-cut. Hayley Mills could have made it in 1961 without changing a word of dialogue. There's none of the flatulence and penis jokes that inundate even movies like "Shrek."
This movie is actually G-rated! After the Seattle screening, I heard someone say "That's the only movie Disney has made in 20 years that Walt would have actually liked." And it's probably true.
Also amazing, it was directed by veteran comedy filmmaker Garry Marshall ("Pretty Woman," "Exit to Eden"), who is not exactly famous for his good-taste humor, but has somehow restrained his old impulses and admirably risen to the task.
His movie is basically a hip fairy tale about a gawky, introverted 15-year-old San Francisco girl named Mia (Anne Hathaway) who comes home from school one day and learns she's a princess and heir to the throne of a tiny European country.
It seems her avant-garde artist mother (Caroline Goodall) never bothered to tell her that the father-she-never-met was a prince, and now that he's gone, her queen/grandmother (Julie Andrews) has come to town, expecting to turn her into Cinderella.
So the story is a kind of "My Fair Lady," with Andrews taking on the Henry Higgins role of giving the girl a spectacular makeover, teaching her manners, filling her with noblesse oblige and overcoming her heel-dragging reluctance.
Frankly, Gina Wendkos' script cannot milk much convincing conflict out of whether the kid will take on the royal job, and there's a wincing clumsiness to Marshall's staging of more than a few of the scenes, especially in the beginning.
But after a rocky start, the film gradually develops its own goofy charm, Mia's transformation from coltish klutz to Brooke Shields is genuinely magical, and the film's straight-faced innocence is ultimately disarming and ingratiating.
The casting is also first-rate:
Hector Elizondo, who is Marshall's "good-luck charm" and has appeared in all the director's previous comedies, offers just the right support as the queen's stoic, infinitely wise, counselor.
Julie Andrews, in her first top-billed movie role in ages, looks so great and is such a winning mixture of regal authority and excruciating self-doubt that you wonder why she hasn't been starring in movies for the past two decades.
In her movie debut, Anne Hathaway is so Audrey Hepburn-esque - and so obviously and infectiously having the time of her life - that she almost single-handedly elevates the film above its weak spots to work as a pleasant little "Roman Holiday" in reverse.
GRADE: B
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