Cast: Hilary Duff, Jennifer Coolidge, Chad Michael Murray
Director: Mark Rosman

A Well-told, Modern Version of a Cliché Fairytale

By Mary-Ann Russon • UrbanWire
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It wouldn't be surprising if you decided to simply give A Cinderella Story a miss, since it's the 3rd teen movie to have graced our shores in 4 months.

Cynic that I am, I was totally prepared to hate this film - after all, who needs yet another retelling of the classic fairytale Cinderella, especially after we've already been treated to 1 version this year - Miramax's Ella Enchanted, which starred Anne Hathaway, of pre-teen movie The Princess Diaries fame.

Thing is, surprisingly, I'd have to say that A Cinderella Story was more enjoyable than either Mean Girls or Ella Enchanted.

Before I say why, let's just accept the fact that teen movies in general will be cliché, so there's no point nitpicking about that - more so because A Cinderella Story is a tale we can recite backwards. The real issue is how the story is told, before it gets to the cliché ending.

Where Mean Girls had a highly illogical plot and Ella Enchanted bastardised the book it was based on to become a cheap imitation of the 1998 Drew Barrymore film Ever After, A Cinderella Story sticks with its original premise of an abused girl with a horrible stepmother and stepsisters, who overcomes adversity and makes her dreams come true.

Despite following an age-old plotline, A Cinderella Story manages to not only update the story so that it's believable today, it carries a strong message that is clear throughout the film, unlike Mean Girls, where the moral is simply inserted near the ending because the filmmakers realised they needed to have one.

Sam Montgomery (Hilary Duff) has a lot of dreams. She wants to graduate from high school and go to Princeton University. She can't stand her horrible selfish stepmother (Jennifer Coolidge) and stepsisters Brianna (Madeline Zima) and Gabriella (Andrea Avery), but she knows that if she doesn't work at her stepmother's diner and fulfil her demands, she won't be given the money for college, and will never be able to realise her dreams. Sam's so used to being downtrodden she no longer stands up for herself. But through the course of the film, she comes to realises that there's a lot more in her than she ever realised.

One of the strongest issues in this movie is that in high school, teenagers are always trying to be somebody they're not, in the hopes of fitting in. Sam falls in love over the Internet with a mystery guy, who's actually Austin Ames (Chad Michael Murray), the popular quarterback of the football team.

Although Austin has everything - popularity, a pretty girlfriend, a potential career in University of Southern California (USC) football, and a successful car maintenance business to take over from his dad - he feels like he's pretending to be somebody he's not. His girlfriend's bitchiness irritates him, and he feels like he's become trapped in his dad's dream. Like Tom Hanks's character in You've Got Mail, the poor little rich boy's only solace is the conversations he has with a mystery girl over the Internet, where he's free to be himself.

Sam's best friend Carter (Dan Byrd) also has this problem. An aspiring actor, Carter is struggling so hard to fit in that he doesn't know how to be himself - he's become more comfortable pretending to be somebody else.

Although I never liked Hilary Duff in Lizzie Maguire, a fluffy, girly pre-teen TV show, I've to admit that her performance in A Cinderella Story is genuine. Duff's Cinderella isn't a weeping, timid nobody who is rescued from her sad fate by a handsome prince - she stands up for herself towards the end and even tells her prince off for being a coward.

And even though it can never compare to Ever After, which really set the standard for Cinderella adaptations, A Cinderella Story achieves what it sets out to do - tell the fairytale in a modern high school teen drama setting, with a credible teen drama atmosphere, dealing with real teen issues, yet retaining every bit of required hilarity.

The soundtrack is pretty good too, with a couple of fitting tracks by Hilary Duff like "Now You Know" and "Anywhere But Here", as well as 2 fantastic rock ballads by the Goo Goo Dolls ("Sympathy") and Edwin McCain ("I'll Be").

So it comes down to this: if you like teen movies, romantic tales, Hilary Duff, or Chad Michael Murray, and you like to laugh, you'll probably like this film. And to all you sceptics out there, I'm not saying A Cinderella Story isn't cliché, I'm just saying there's more beneath the surface if you just bother to have a look.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

All photos courtesy Warner Brothers.

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