All three movies opening at Carmike Cinemas this week offer familiar figures to established fan bases.  To be fair to all constituencies, your reviewer dutifully made his way to as many films as possible – so now, for a limited time only, TWO reviews for the price of ONE!!!!
       The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement reunites all important characters from 2001‘s tweener hit: regal Julie Andrews as Queen Clarisse, perky Ann Hathaway as Princess Mia, Hector Elizondo as urbane spy chief-cum-chauffeur Joseph.  Each gives a competent performance that reconfirms what we liked about their characters last time.
        That’s the problem with this sequel, though. Like an average sitcom, it hits the audience’s comfort zone, but it really doesn’t take the characters anywhere new or interesting.
        The most attractive feature of The Princess Diaries was Hathaway’s skillful portrayal of Mia’s transformation from a gawky, somewhat mousy teenager, into the beautiful and (comparatively) graceful princess of the fictional Genovia, all set against the realistic backdrop of San Francisco.
        The sequel finds Mia already beautiful, though still subject to comedic pratfalls – no transformation needed. It is set in Genovia, an impossible country whose inhabitants variously speak German, French, or English with widely diverse accents.  The few external shots show Genovia’s capitol as a squeaky-clean Disneyfied version of “quaint” Olde Europe.
        Having adjusted to her new role as heir to Genovia’s throne, Mia now finds a new threat to her happiness in an obscure law that requires she marry before she can be crowned – a law being manipulated by the dastardly Viscount Mabrey, a disciple of Machiavelli played with sinister zeal by John Rhys-Davies.  Of course, the film’s fairy-tale premise couldn’t withstand Mia not becoming queen, so it’s just a question of how he will be foiled.
        “Princess’s” valiant attempt at a feminist stance (the unfair law requires marriage only for queens, not kings) runs aground on Mia’s ecstasy at discovering a royal wardrobe rivaling Imelda Marcos’.  “My very own mall!” she exults.  Clearly, this is what’s important about overturning an outdated law and becoming queen.
        Still, two little girls attending with their mother liked the movie, and as their mother said, “It’s one of the few movies I can take them to and still watch as an adult.”
       The audience for Alien vs. Predator skews quite a bit older and favors those who prefer to be scared out of their seats to fairy-tale happy endings.  It stars . . . nobody you ever heard of.  Why pay good many for big names when the draw is the monsters?
        AvP gives us two – the parasitic, slimy, reptilian creatures of the Alien movie franchise and the dreadlocked, humanoid hunters of Predator.  Throw in ancient ruins for the Indiana Jones/Lara Croft aficionados, and you can almost see the commercial calculations going on in the studio creative offices.
        To this non-fan of the horror genre, the movie was surprisingly good.  The no-name cast provided a good performance, especially Sanaa Lathan (perhaps the best-known cast member after her Tony nomination for Raisin in the Sun) as the Antarctic explorer charged with the expedition’s safety, and Ewen Bremner as a goofy Scottish engineer relentlessly showing his colleagues pictures of his kids.
        The setting is kind of cool, if based on erroneous science: a mysterious pyramid, its mixed Egyptian, Aztec, and Cambodian construction showing it was “mankind’s first,” is discovered 2,000 feet below the Antarctic ice shelf.  A prison-maze that reconfigures itself every 10 minutes, it houses the dormant mother Alien, who has been restored to life for the Predators’ centennial hunt.  The humans’ sole purpose? To serve as incubators for Alien babies.
        AvP reverts to the first Alien movie – put the humans in an enclosed environment with a voracious monster, then watch them get killed off one by one.  The chief mystery is which of the humans get to survive; the biggest flaw is the speed with which they are dispatched.  This is an exercise in gory excess, not really suspense – but, after all, that’s what the audience expects.  
        Too little time to get to Yu-gi-oh, the third of the week’s new offerings, so filmgoers are on their own here.  But then, it’s even money they already know what they’re getting with this adaptation of a popular Japanese anime.

Return to Wally Hastings's Film Reviews.
Return to Wally Hastings's Home Page.

This page last updated on October 11, 2003.