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

[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.