“I bet there’s an exact aerodynamic formula,” theorizes Michelle Trachtenberg’s science-geek character in “Ice Princess” as she ponders a physics experiment about the dynamics of figure skating.
The folks at Walt Disney clearly figure there’s an exact formula to the princess tale: Take one goody-goody, wafer-thin teenage outsider, hand her an impossible dream come true, add water (frozen, in this case) and a nasty rival or two, then sit back and count the family-ticket admissions.
This latest girlie confection from Disney has a good, though feeble, heart and the best of intentions, but it’s a pretender to the throne that musters little of the charm of the studio’s 2001 hit “The Princess Diaries.”
“Ice Princess” substitutes skating talent for royal blood, but it’s essentially trying to be the same movie, lifting a sweet little nobody out of the pack and setting her on a pedestal. Disney even turned to “Princess Diaries” author Meg Cabot to help fashion the story behind “Ice Princess” with screenwriter Hadley Davis.
There’s nothing wrong with that old-fashioned, squeaky-clean Disney formula. When it’s well done, it can be a refreshing break from the crude comedy of most family films today.
Yet “Ice Princess” is not particularly well done, an odd and disappointing follow-up for British director Tim Fywell, who made a wonderful feature debut with 2003’s quirky family drama “I Capture the Castle.”
Trachtenberg plays Casey Carlyle, a science prodigy on track to achieve the goal she and her strong-willed single mom (Joan Cusack) have had in sight for years: A physics scholarship and admission to Harvard.
A skater with experience only on the pond behind her house, Casey enters a beginner’s class to get some first-person experience for a science project on the physics of skating.
Casey finds her inner Dorothy Hamill and soon is twirling doubles and triples, catching the eye of coach Tina Harwood (Kim Cattrall), who’s training her daughter, Gen (Hayden Panettiere), to become a skating champ.
The speed at which Casey becomes a serious contender is just ludicrous. While “Princess Diaries” was built on a bolt-out-of-the-blue premise common to fairy tales, “Ice Princess” comes off as even more farfetched.
The notion that a casual skater, already in her late teens and well beyond the critical formative years for young athletes, could leap to competitive status practically overnight seriously undermines the movie’s credibility.
Casey’s training is handled so superficially, the message sent is that rather than hard work, all you need to achieve your dreams are a couple of quick musical montages.
To its credit, “Ice Princess” departs a bit from expectations. Standard formula would cast Tina’s daughter Gen as Casey’s bitter rival, and the movie leans toward that direction initially. Then Gen turns out to be a decent-hearted person and true pal to Casey, who encounters enemies from somewhat less predictable corners.
Skating sequences are nicely choreographed, though sloppy wide shots plainly reveal a skating double in Trachtenberg’s place. In today’s CGI-world, Peter Jackson can turn Andy Serkis into both Gollum and King Kong, yet Disney can’t spring for some visual tweaks to plaster Trachtenberg’s face onto the body of her stand-in?
The cast is likable enough, with Trachtenberg mining the same nervous twitter from her kid-sister days on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
More head-butting screen time between Cattrall and Cusack as opposing moms could have livened up the movie. They only have a couple of scenes together, including some lively bickering in the closing moments that shows a spark of real odd-couple chemistry.
Cusack and Cattrall should do a Lucy-and-Ethel road movie together.