The Princess Diaries

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The Princess Diaries
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Comments

• Julie Andrews has been here before. Back in the
  '50s, she played Eliza Doolittle in the classic
  musical "My Fair Lady," making Broadway history
  as the lower-class lass who passes as an
  aristocrat after Professor Henry Higgins teaches
  her to talk and walk like a lady. Decades
  later, "The Princess Diaries" lets Andrews (see
  interview) try the Higgins role herself. Here,
  she plays the queen of Genovia, who has decided
  Genovia's next ruler should be her granddaughter,
  Mia, a San Francisco teenager who's never been
  told that her long-estranged father had royal
  blood

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• Mia knows little about Europe, and nothing about
  the tricks of running a country, but the queen is
  willing to mold her manners, coach her diction,
  dictate her wardrobe, and do anything needed to
  make her a proper Old World princess. The job
  carries plenty of perks - a limo is mighty
  tempting to a girl whose Mustang can barely make
  it up a hill - but Mia's a shy type who dreads
  the spotlight a royal perch would bring. Can her
  well-meaning grandma put her on the road to
  monarchy? Or do her Californian values run so
  deep that Henry Higgins himself couldn't change
  them?

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• "The Princess Diaries" unfolds its story from
  Mia's point of view, aiming at teen viewers
  who'll identify with her identity crisis and with
  the everyday details of adolescent life -
  quarrels with mom , rivalries, and romances at
  school - that the movie convincingly paints. A
  well-chosen cast helps the picture come alive
  Andrews as the queen Anne Hathaway as her
  undecided granddaughter Caroline Goodall as
  Mia's mom Hector Elizondo as a royal
  assistant  and Heather Matarazzo in a perfect
  performance as Mia's closest pal. Only the boys
  in Mia's life tend to look like generic teenpic
  characters.

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• With its leisurely pace and unfancy filmmaking,
  "The Princess Diaries" is a likable throwback to
  an old tradition of pictures from the Disney
  studio. While most of today's youth-targeted
  movies unleash bombardments of visual effects and
  pop-culture distractions, director Garry Marshall
  spins this yarn with a quiet dignity that
  Genovia's staid queen would applaud.

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• The film isn't backward-looking in its attitudes
  toward modern society, though. Two or three
  decades ago, Mia would surely have ended the
  story by refusing her royal opportunity in the
  name of American values like democracy and
  individualism. By contrast, the Mia of 2001
  decides to grab the job. How else could a
  middle-class girl get enough influence and power
  to make the world listen to her ideas?

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