A Cinderella Story (2004)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Mark Rosman

Writer (WGA):

Leigh Dunlap (written by)

Release Date:

16 July 2004 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Family | Romance

Tagline:

Once upon a time... can happen any time.

Plot:

Routinely exploited by her wicked stepmother, the downtrodden Sam Montgomery is excited about the prospect of meeting her Internet beau at the school's Halloween dance.

Plot Keywords:

Dance | Diner | Halloween | Stepmother | Cinderella

Awards:

4 wins & 8 nominations

Cast

Hilary Duff	...	Sam Montgomery
Jennifer Coolidge	...	Fiona
Chad Michael Murray	...	Austin Ames
Dan Byrd	...	Carter Farrell
Regina King	...	Rhonda
Julie Gonzalo	...	Shelby Cummings
Lin Shaye	...	Mrs. Wells
Madeline Zima	...	Brianna
Andrea Avery	...	Gabriella
Mary Pat Gleason	...	Eleanor
Paul Rodriguez	...	Bobby
Whip Hubley	...	Hal Montgomery
Kevin Kilner	...	Andy Ames
Erica Hubbard	...	Madison
Simon Helberg	...	Terry Anderson

Also Known As:

Une aventure de Cendrillon (Canada: French title)
Untitled 'Cinderella' Project (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG for mild language and innuendo.

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

USA | Canada

Language:

English | German | Czech

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

USA:PG (certificate #40835) | Iceland:L | Malaysia:U | Netherlands:AL | South Korea:12 | Argentina:Atp | Australia:PG | Canada:G | Finland:K-7 | Germany:o.Al. | Philippines:G | Singapore:PG | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

George's 50's Diner - 4390 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Hilary Duff accepted the lead role because Charles Perrault's story "Cinderella" was her favorite fairy tale when she was growing up.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: The camera and a crew member can clearly be seen in Gabriela's car when she is practicing her "speech" at the gas station.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Sam: Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, lived a beautiful little girl and her widowed father.

Movie Connections:

Spoofs Star Wars (1977)

Soundtrack:

Fallen

Great as a Cinderella story; just so-so as a high school rom-com

I haven't looked at other reviews of A Cinderella Story yet, but especially because it's a Hilary Duff film, I'd expect there to be a lot of scathing comments. That's because Hilary Duff is, or was, at least, popular with tweens and teens, and lots of slightly older folks have a tendency to hate commercial or popular stuff just because it's commercial or popular. Of course, they find other ways to justify their effectively institutional hatred of this stuff, and I'd guess that the main complaint would be the clichéd and predictable nature of the material here.

And that's true. A Cinderella Story is clichéd and predictable, but that's not a great reason to dislike it. It is a Cinderella story, after all--it tells you right there in the title--retooled as a contemporary Los Angeles-area high school romance-comedy. We all know the Cinderella story fairly well. And any film fan at least old enough to almost be through with high school is surely familiar with the clichés of rom-coms and high school films. Most of us could write the basics of A Cinderella Story's plot without even seeing the film's trailer. So for adults, at least, A Cinderella Story is going to be successful or not dependent on how well it hikes its well-trodden path.

For me, the best material was the more traditional Cinderella-based stuff. Jennifer Coolidge (voluptuously) fills the role of the wicked stepmother. I like Coolidge a lot. She has tremendous charisma and performs her infamous, quirky sarcastic act here with verve. I also like Duff. The two actresses playing Duff's stepsisters were new to me, but just as charismatic as Coolidge. Director Mark Rosman quotes some of the cartoonish visual gags of Disney's Cinderella (1950) more than I expected, and it works amazingly well. It's one element that pushes the film into a welcomed, absurd-surreal territory.

What didn't work as well for me was the material when Rosman and credited writer Leigh Dunlap forgot about doing a pumped up remake of Cinderella. Too much of A Cinderella Story deals with Sam's (Duff) budding cyber-romance, her typical high school problems and the caricatured, stereotypical high school cliques. It's not that these other segments are bad, exactly, but they just don't have the spark or humor that the Cinderella material has, and especially for something like the cliques, we've seen this tens of times before. These scenes would be right at home if we edited them into any of those other films or television shows--sometimes I had to remind myself that I wasn't watching, say, a Cordelia scene from the first season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997).

So A Cinderella Story has a bit of a split personality--as a funny and wacky remake of Cinderella and as a far less humorous, pretty generic "getting through adolescence and finding yourself" message film. That After-School-Special-styled message may be a worthy one, but intercut with a great version of Cinderella, it doesn't quite fit, even though Rosman does finally start to find a unique and admirable groove while still alternating modes towards the end of the film.