| ICE PRINCESS |
 2005
- USA
Director: Tim Fywell - Reviewed by Vickie 
Not so long ago, I was a figure skating addict. If there was a
televised skating competition, I watched. If it was the Olympics or
Worlds, I set my VCR. I was hardcore. I could spot a toe-loop a mile
away, pinpoint the moment a lutz went awry, and I could not only recite
artistic scores with precision, but could explain them and even
decipher judging ordinals.
But then (c. 1998), the world became oversaturated with figure skating. It was everywhere. It was too much. Everyone and their cousin were holding skating invitationals and, in my opinion, the sport went Hollywood. It lost its edge, so to speak, and I completely lost interest. So it was with mixed emotions and more than a little trepidation that I sat down for Ice Princess, Disney’s girl-with-a-skating-dream offering that likely would have starred Hillary Duff had it been made prior to Camp Duff’s split from the studio. Instead, Buffy the Vampire Slayer veteran Michelle Trachtenberg stars as Casey Carlyle, a bookish “science geek,” who’s more comfortable with her head buried in a book than interacting with others. But when a prestigious physics scholarship is up for grabs, Casey decides to use her secret love of figure skating as the inspiration for a project she’ll present to the Harvard admissions committee. She’ll use science to perfect skaters’ on-ice moves! She volunteers with a renowned champion-turned-instructor (Kim Cattrall, in prime ice queen mode) and slowly begins to apply her mathematical expertise to herself, resulting in astounding improvement in her performance that puts her academic future in question. It’s hard to be critical of a Disney movie so clearly aimed at the 8-to-13 ‘tween-girl market, especially since it will likely be an undisputed hit among that demographic. It’s exactly the kind of movie you’d expect it to be, and contains all the elements (the big competition! the evil rival! the dreamy boy who sees Casey for the great person she really is!) that a formula film of its nature is required to have. And you know what? It’s fine. It’s fluffy fun. It’s not going to win any Academy Awards, but that’s okay. Trachtenberg is a likable enough lead, and Cattrall—though her character repeatedly veers back and forth between militaristic coach and warm-hearted mom—keeps the proceedings entertaining (even if it’s unintentional at times). Trevor Blucas, as the aforementioned dreamy boy, is appropriately dreamy, and little Kirsten Olsen leaps off the screen as Nikki, a hilariously competitive pint-sized skater nicknamed “The Jumping Shrimp.” Joan Cusack (perpetually clad in brown and looking forlorn) is entirely wasted as Casey’s dowdy mother, though, and there are obvious technical/logical oversights that will peeve skating connoisseurs. But I suspect those issues will be easily overlooked by the legions of young fans who’ll flock to this fairy tale on ice. For them, and for me, Ice Princess isn’t so much about logic or reason or stellar storytelling as it is about mindless escapism. And for mindless escapism, this one’s a 5.0. |
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