(A Movie Review on Mark Rosman’s A Cinderella Story) May Love L. Oniola

One of the things that the retelling of a fairy tale does to the tale itself, say Cinderella, is that the tale becomes more polished, cleaner, in the sense that questions about the tale or some improbable parts in the tale are addressed and given more logical reasoning; the characters are given more depth and become more human; the story becomes more complex, more “life-like” as opposed to its being dream-like. That was what the movie, A Cinderella Story, starred by Hilary Duff (Samantha Montgomery) and Chad Michael Murray (Austin Aimes), did: a Cinderella tale that is applied in the modern times and which addressed one of the most-frequently-asked questions about the tale itself: why Cinderella let herself become enslaved to her step-family’s wishes.

In truth, I was afraid of seeing the same kind of Cinderella (meaning, the one who is usually portrayed in the fairy tales) in the movie A Cinderella Story. I was sick of having a Cinderella who could not stand up for herself. I dreaded seeing Cinderella – or for this instance, Samantha – saying that she’s doing everything she is doing because they (the stepmother and the bitchy stepsisters) are her only family, and she loves them. What a waste of P40! I could have seen this for free on TV where soaps with themes like this abound!

Thankfully, Samantha did not make me hear this piece of junk from her. In one of the opening scenes of the movie, Samantha is seen practicing baseball (or softball – I really could not distinguish the difference between the two) with her best friend, Carter. Carter asks her why she always follows Fiona’s (the stepmother’s) wishes. Why couldn’t she say “no”? And Sam answers: “It’s simple: no Fiona, no money for college.”

When she said this, I slumped on my seat in relief. Finally, a decent answer by a smart Cinderella! I mean, the answer did not give me a big oof! in the gut, but it made a lot of sense. If Sam couldn’t go to Princeton (the school she applied in), she’ll never be able to escape her stepmother. And she admits that life with her stepfamily was hell. (Halleluiah!) And her means of escape from hell was through Princeton. And this is the other thing about the movie: Samantha’s way of escape was through college and not through marriage. In the fairy tale, Cinderella was only able to escape her stepfamily by marrying the prince. Several movies having Cinderella-like plots also follow the fairy tale’s ending (like the movies Pretty Woman and Maid in Manhattan). Surprisingly, although the movie was faithful to the fairy tale itself (the bitchy stepfamily, the ball, the glass slipper that got left behind, which in this version was a mobile phone), it did not follow that tale to the letter, which I think is a good thing.

Finally, what I really liked most about the movie was that it did not promise forever. Unlike how fairy tales mostly end, A Cinderella Story ended with the girl, Samantha, saying that she really does not know what the future holds. After all, she was only a freshman! She did not promise that she was going to marry Austin (she still got her Prince as her boyfriend) or that she was going to live happily ever after. But she was hopeful for the future, keeping in mind her father’s motto: “Never let the fear of striking out stop you from playing the game.”

The movie really isn’t something that I would put in my list of favorite movies. The actors were good-looking, certainly – there were shots that almost made me want to scream “Stop right there! I’ll just get my camera!” I liked Samantha’s best friend, Carter – I think he was one of the more interesting characters in the movie. But the actors were really not that good. I always got distracted with the way Hilary Duff pouted and bit her lips, and there were instances when I thought she was going to start singing. I think that her lousiest acting was in the locker room scene. Not only were the lines in that scene too exaggerated (they were long lines considering she said that she was in a hurry and she acted like she was about to use the potty), what was worse, I could not feel the emotion from her acting.

But, all in all, the movie was fun to watch. Although A Cinderella Story, as the movie title suggested, it was another Cinderella story, it has some fine points. For one, when Samantha got inside her own car with the prince, she wasn’t bound for the prince’s palace; instead, she was bound for Princeton – now that’s somewhere no Cinderella has ever gone before!