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A Cinderella Story (Widescreen) (2004)
Starring: Hilary Duff, Jennifer Coolidge Director: Susan Duff Rating: PG
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High school senior Sam Montgomery (Hilary Duff) in a modern day Cinderella Story a she lives at the beck and call of her self-obsessed step-mother Fiona (Jennifer Coolidge) and her sinfully wicked step-sisters, who treat her more like a servant than a member of the family. With her sights set on attending Princeton, Sam finds her less-than-sparkling social life wonderfully complicated when she meets her Prince Charming online. But when her anonymous cyber soul mate turns out to be her high school's über-popular quarterback Austin Ames (Chad Michael Murray), Sam makes a mad dash back to reality, leaving her cell phone behind just before the clock strikes midnight in true Cinderella story fasion. Fearing rejection if her secret is revealed, Sam dodges Austin's efforts to discover the identity of his princess Cinderella in this comedy, romantic story. Will Sam let fear hold her back, or will she find the courage to be herself and claim the life she's always wanted? Her chance at "happily ever after" in A Cinderella Story depends on it.
A short time ago in a valley far, far away, a timeless tale was modernized. A royal ball was turned into the Halloween homecoming dance, the evil stepmother was turned into Stifler’s Mom (Jennifer Coolidge), the stepsisters became valley girls, and the glass slipper switched into a cell phone.
In this latest telling, of Cinderella is Sam (Hilary Duff), aka PrincetonGirl818, a girl who spends her days studying to get into Princeton (because that’s where princesses go in this story), her nights slaving for her evil stepmother at a Valley roller-diner with the class of a collagen injection. The majority of her school hours are spent text messaging her secret admirer, Austin (Chad Michael Murray), aka Nomad. The evil stepsisters are social jokes with the combined IQ of an imbecile, and the fairy godmother is a waitress sister with an attitude (Regina King).
Of course Prince Charming is the King of high school – he’s captain of the football team, student body president, and object of lust of every female freshman and above. As in all teen angst movies, Prince Charming really only wants to be a writer and ditch daddy’s dream for him (in this case it’s going to Princeton instead of USC). Cinderella is, of course, a social nobody that everyone calls “Diner Girl.” in this story. Her only friend is a method actor who goes into school as a different stereotype each day.
Amazingly, A Cinderella Story actually draws blood from this turnip plot. Even though each character is a complete cardboard cut-out, everybody plays their part with enough panache to make it funny. Jennifer Coolidge highlights the movie as a perfect demonstration of what happens when white trash attacks. First-time writer Leigh Dunlap does a deft job of making valley girls even a little bit funny again, although there’s not an original bone in the movie’s A cinderella story's body.
A Cinderella Story is not really noteworthy and not really bad. It’s got enough humor to get a smirk about every five minutes, but also has enough cheesiness and stupidity to raise plenty of laughs!
Even so, A Cinderella Story ends up nicely timed: it’s a decent romantic comedy in a summer that hasn’t produced anything worth seeing. It’s also got typecasted “hot teen guy #1” Chad Michael Murray, which will ensure that the teen girl half of the theatre will be glued to their seats with drool. These slight edges should make sure that A Cinderella Story does fine in the box office and ends up on the DVD shelves of many makeup clad teens that really, truly, desperately only want to be themselves. |
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| Cast & Crew: |
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Starring:
Hilary Duff | Jennifer Coolidge | Chad Michael Murray | Dan Byrd | Regina King | Julie Gonzalo | Lin Shaye | Madeline Zima | ...more
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Directed By:
Susan Duff | Mark Rosman
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| Technical Information: |
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Genre:
Comedy, Drama, Family, Romantic, Teens
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DVD Release Date:
February 8, 2005
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Format: Region 1
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Rating:
PG
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Year:
2004
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Regional Coding:
R1:
Will only play on North American Region 1 or multi-region DVD players.
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Number of Discs:
1
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Subtitles:
English, French, Spanish
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Screen Ratio:
Anamorphic (16:9), Widescreen Edition - 1.85:1
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| Sound System: | |
English (Dolby Digital 5.1) | |
Running Time:
95 minutes
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Studio:
Warner Brothers
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Catalogue Number:
DVE031452
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UPC/Barcode Number:
085393145224
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Closed-Captioned: Yes
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Color: Yes
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| DVD Features: |
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- Challenges: Find Your Prince/Princess challenge - See video clips and answer questions to see who your true love is
- Featurette: Cinderella Couture: The Making of a Fashionably Modern Fairytale - A featurette on the costumes and makeup that at first "made under" and later made over Hillary Duff.
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