The Prince & Me Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)April 12th, 2004
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.*
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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
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
