The Prince and Me: Charmingly Disarming

Starring: Julia Stiles, Luke Mably
Category: Romantic Comedy, Romance

Let's get one thing straight. This is light material. This is eye candy. And romance at it's most romantic. Which girl never dreamt about her own prince charming? And to have the boy that you are in love with turn into one is a bonus. Big time. Plus he wasn't a frog to begin with.
Julia Stiles is amazing and beautiful in her own wonderful way. She is totally believable as Paige Morgan, the driven country girl out to be the doctor she wants to be. In fact, Julia's beauty is that she can be plain jane and beautiful at the same time. Luke does an ok job overall but did his best work when he was in the meeting with labor reps and business heads.

However it is unfortunate several things happened that failed to lift this movie from run-of-the-mill to a classic. Let's run through them.

First. Poor secondary character development. Neither Paige's friends nor Zoren is properly developed. Zoren had the most opportunity but only showed flashes of it in the scene where he describes how the palace caught fire. Paige's friends also had potential and were probably well developed, character-wise in pre-production. They just wasn't used.

Since this is not a high-minded movie, let's not pretend that it is. Realism here will not help, espcially when there is a prince involved. So, let's take Pretty Woman as an example. Very good secondary charaters. Even when they have limited screen time. Everybody remembers the store manager that tried to suck up to Richard Gere's Edward. And who can forget Laura San Giacomo's Kit, the best friend to Julia Robert's character. Maybe there were too many and there wasn't time to develop them.

Spoiler alert
Second. Bad story structure. The format for these movies would have been one of "boy and girl whom are opposites, attract and overcome problem to live happily ever after" OR "boy and girl who are together face obstacles and grow from the experience and ultimately be together". This movie tried to do both while not dropping out the exotic locales and background (e.g. time wasted in taxi scene just to prove that they were in Denmark). It failed. Towards the end, it seemed rushed. If they just parted, the movie could have bucked convention and ended on a sad note. Hey, it worked for Titanic. And maybe set up a possible sequel. But at the end, after Paige leaves, we suddenly see her graduate and King Edward shows up professing his love for her and giving the I'll-wait-for-you-whatever-it-takes speech. It was such a jolt.

Most likely from a deleted scene

How much time had passed? There is another problem. Time seems to jump around too much. No transition scenes to show the changing of the seasons. Who knows, maybe Paige really moved on and has another boyfriend. If it was a long period, it would have helped the transition by inserting scenes like Paige going about college life and smiling seeing a Danish... flag at the mall or on a bottle of beer. Or that King Edward still has the college paper delivered to him as private mail and smiles seeing a lawn mower at some official function. Then there could have been a matchmaker angle. Something along the lines of Edwards parents or mother getting together with Paige's mother and bringing them back together. So many possibilities wasted.

I'll say it again, the end seemed rushed when it wasn't needed to. There was time to make this movie right. All it needed was a little of love and a few establishing shots. Nothing says rushed (or cheap) than a movie with the main actors in all of the scenes. Look at A Walk to Remember (Shane West, Mandy Moore). It was like two movies plots in one. And beautiful scenery. A surprise to everyone and one of my personal favorites.

But despite of all that, it still is a nice movie. Whatever went right for it, it went in spades. Plus Julia Stiles and Luke Malby had real on-screen chemistry. I still watch it and think of what could be. Sigh.