Meet Ella

[calimac]

Digging through the local DVDs revealed Ella Enchanted, which on watching turned out to be one of those cheerfully anachronistic medieval costume-land stories of which The Princess Bride and The Tenth Kingdom are well-known exemplars (Cary Elwes, who single-handedly made the film of The Princess Bride work, appears here as the villain), but its closer relatives are A Knight's Tale and Shrek. It's not as good as Shrek -- nothing is -- but was very enjoyable anyway. Loved little bits like the hand-cranked wooden escalator, the IV Seasons Hotel, and Medieval Teen magazine. Anne Hathaway, who looks like a young Julia Roberts except that she's both pretty and funny, stars as a politically-conscious Cinderella. Based on a YA novel by Gail Carson Levine which has something of the same flavor. Won endorsement all around the room, including from the visiting seventh-grade teacher (alias a niece) who cheerfully laid aside her stack of student papers to watch the film. A teacher's work is never done, and recommending this film to kids of just that age may be good teacher's work.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I plan to get this one, most definitely.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

Just a note: the 7th-grade teacher niece was the one who most wanted to see the movie. She has a thing for princesses, as you should remember from the wedding. I wish I'd saved some of the Opus cartoon strips from the past couple of months. The character Pickles, a rather gawky little girl, has an addiction to princesses herself.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, her princess thing. I keep forgetting about that, because she doesn't look like someone with a princess thing. And instead of a Capital-P Prince, she married a teddy bear. (He is a prince, but in behavior not looks.)

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed it ... everyone else I've spoken to razzed it. Yes, it's kind of dumb, but not in a bad way. And Anne Hathaway has serious star potential. [b]Shrek[/b] is an excellent point of comparison - not only does it do the same sort of pomo playing with faerie-stories, it's also got the same general kind of humor. Nowhere near as good, as you say ... but then, I doubt a live action film could be.

Checkin' out [b]Pride[/b] tomorrow?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Judged by Tolkien standards, Ella would be an absolute travesty. But it doesn't pretend to such standards, so it's easy enough to judge by more appropriate ones. One sine qua non for me: it doesn't have any scenes in which the actors are standing around looking as if they're waiting for the director to tell them what to do. That flaw has ruined way too many films for me, most recently Spiderman I.

Pride is the Lion King ripoff I read about somewhere? I don't have it on my list. (I've never actually seen Lion King either, except a bit that was on in a video store once.)

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Ummm, I don't know how you'd call it a [b]Lion King[/b] ripoff, unless anything animated about big cats is a [b]Lion King[/b] ripoff. It's a new animated series by the [b]Shrek[/b] people. The basic conceit is that it's a sitcom about the home life of Siegfried and Roy's cats. Might or might not be good but I'm interested enough to check it out.