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Film
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Ice Princess
Very often, film critics are the equivalent of the Russian judge when it comes to rating formulaic fare. But in this case, Todd Gilchrist is happy to flash a surprisingly high number.
Friday, March 18, 2005
By Todd Gilchrist
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Walt Disney Pictures
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Worthy post-Dawson's Creek effort
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Ice Princess is the kind of film that most adult critics cringe at the prospect of watching. It’s a movie designed for teen or even pre-teen girls, and follows formula with such dedication that its secrets can be deduced with but a single glance at the theatrical trailer, much less those relentless thirty-second TV spots.
But every once in a while, such a film comes along and completely surprises those selfsame reviewers. It manages to throw in an offbeat twist or two, or subvert those expectations completely, or, best of all, demonstrate that occasionally, Hollywood gets right the execution - not just the concept - of real-deal ‘family’ films. And while Ice Princess doesn’t quite reach the heights of superlative entries of the recent past (think Polar Express, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, The Incredibles, etc.), it does manage to sidestep many of the genre’s pitfalls and provide a decent two hours of entertainment.
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Walt Disney Pictures
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Realistic mom Cusack
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Michelle Trachtenberg, one of the co-stars of last spring’s gag-inducing Eurotrip, plays Casey Carlyle, a bookworm whose entire academic career has been aimed at going to Harvard. After Casey develops a class project based on the physics of figure skating, she develops an affinity for the sport, and soon joins the ranks of her ice-obsessed classmates. When her mother Joan (Joan Cusack) objects to her newfound athletics-over-academics approach, however, Casey finds she must decide whether to continue on her lifelong path as an exceptional student, or throw out years of studying to reach her new goal of becoming a competitive figure skater.
Needless to say, it’s in none of these by-the-numbers machinations that the film finds its unique voice, or distinguishes itself from other movies about kids who have dreams that would be reached of only their mom/dad/guardian could see how happy they are while working towards it. There is more than one requisite ‘I forbid thee!’ speech, delivered from on high from Casey’s mom; so too is there the last-minute parental arrival at the competition, where Joan sees Casey’s abilities and recants all of her objections.
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Walt Disney Pictures
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Showing her new HBO chops
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But the difference between Ice Princess and compatriots like Raise Your Voice can be found in the particulars. Joan, for one, isn’t written as the unassailable voice of parental authority, but as a parent who actually, sincerely wants her daughter to have all of the opportunities she never did. More impressive is the fact that she has the reflexivity to understand where her ambitions end and Casey’s begin; her objections to her daughter’s right turn from physics to figure skating are for the most part perfectly legitimate, but instead of wearing script-ordained blinders, Joan has merely over-reached into her daughter’s ambition, and replaced it with her own.
Much of the film’s effectiveness must be credited to the adult actors, whom one must assume were cleverly never told it was ok to simply make a formulaic family movie. Joan Cusack is both the intellectual and emotional center of the picture, elevating her interactions with Trachtenberg to the occasional equivalent of a relative Hollywood triple axel. That Cusack can argue with her on-screen daughter in rhythms that evoke actual parent-child conversations provides a welcome respite for folks older than the designated age group the film is aimed at, and lends the film legitimate drama.
Kim Cattrall, meanwhile, has the thankless job of being the film’s heavy, but makes her character succinct and bitchy without turning her into a caricature. Perhaps her years on Sex and the City taught her something about acting that drawer-shucking turns in Porky’s and Police Academy could not; Samantha was the only real and sympathetic character to survive all six seasons of the show, and Cattrall demonstrates even in piffle like this how convention can be transformed into something compelling.
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Walt Disney Pictures
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A ringer to oppose The Ring 2
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There are plenty of problems with Ice Princess, not the least of which being Casey’s immediate physical aptitude for figure skating. But then again, one might observe that this kind of triumph-over-adversity formula was put to effect not dissimilarly in last year’s Best Picture winner. That isn’t to say that Ice Princess shares qualitative company with Million Dollar Baby, but it does nevertheless remonstrate the fact that there’s a reason those clichés exist in the first place; namely, they work.
Ultimately, Ice Princess is itself a lot like the film’s formulaic, skating-obsessed protagonist: the picture falls on its butt as often as it lands a perfect turn, but its perseverance ultimately pays off with a win not only for the film, but the audience as well.
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