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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 11.76%
Worth A Look: 16.18%
Average: 13.24%
Pretty Bad: 51.47%
Total Crap: 7.35%
6 reviews, 32 user ratings
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| Prince & Me, The |
by Lybarger
"A Royal Letdown"
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If your idea of a fine escape from reality is two hours of being sedated almost to the point of unconsciousness, then The Prince & Me is grand entertainment. Considering what director Martha Coolidge has done in the past with romantic comedy, however, the movie can't be viewed as anything other than a royal letdown.Lacking the style, wit, finesse or heart of Valley Girl or even Out to Sea, The Prince & Me starts predictably and ends jarringly. Denmark's prince Edward (Luke Mably, 28 Days Later) is driving his parents (Edward Fox and Miranda Richardson) up a wall because his skirt chasing and hot rodding have made him fodder for Danish tabloids.
He decides to study at an American college, where he hopes the women will act like they do in a Girls Gone Wild video. The family agrees, hoping his time in exile won't embarrass the rest of them further.
Meanwhile, University of Wisconsin pre-med student Paige Morgan (Julia Stiles) is doggedly trying to juggle her studies and her job as a barmaid. The future sovereign mistakenly assumes that she'll be like one of the girls on the videos and earns a blunt rebuke.
Only in Hollywood would this be the start of a blossoming romance.
If you imagine that Paige will become less stuffy and Edward will finally live up to his royal obligations, you've saved yourself the ticket price. As a friend of mine put it once, you've already seen everything the film has to offer during the trailer, the feature length version's just the director's cut.
Without a little bit of spontaneity, stories like these become dull quickly. In Valley Girl, Coolidge was able to overcome this hurdle by casting two performers (Deborah Foreman and a then unknown Nicolas Cage) who really looked at home in each other's company even if they seemed from very different worlds.
Stiles and Mably look cute but really don't interact all that convincingly, so it's hard to get worked up over their ultimate fate. Ben Miller has some moments as Edward's long-suffering valet. Fox and Richardson emerge with their dignity intact, but don't get much room to work. It's always a tragedy when actors who are that good are stuck on the sidelines.
Valley Girl also benefited enormously from Coolidge's eye for atmosphere and strong sense of style. The world of the Valley and of Hollywood were convincingly different, so the "opposites attract" angle seemed believable, and the very 80s soundtrack was full of fine tunes that were just a little ahead of mainstream radio.
No such luck here. The only good song on the soundtrack is an oldie by The Cars, and Ontario and Prague look a little different from Wisconsin and Copenhagen. Money must have been tight because we really don't get a sense of splendor from seeing Edward's world, and the weather looks a bit too warm for November during the Stateside scenes.
It also stretches suspension of disbelief to hear Danish cabinet meetings conducted entirely in English. If the grosses of The Passion of the Christ are any indication, a few subtitles never hurt anyone.The convoluted ending doesn't help either. It's sort of like that nasty aftertaste that comes with several low carb beverages. On second thought, it gives The Prince & Me the only flavor it has.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=9071&reviewer=382
originally posted: 01/01/05 10:57:21
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USA
02-Apr-2004 (PG)
DVD: 10-Aug-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
24-Jun-2004
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