Reviews and More

A good friend of mine was in a bind today and needed me to babysit her 10-year-old daughter for most of the morning. I didn’t have anything else going on, so I agreed to it. The little girl (named Isabel), brought a couple of DVDs with her to help pass the time. One of them happened to be The Princess Diaries, which is what we ended up watching. Here’s what I thought of the film.

Anne Hathaway stars as 15-year-old Mia Thermopolis, an ugly-duckling misfit cursed with a wild mop of frizzy hair and a complete lack of social grace. Mia only has two friends at school: one is Lilly (played by Heather Matarazzo) and the other is Lilly’s brother Michael (Robert Schwartzman). All the other kids either treat her with contempt or act like she’s invisible.

Then one day Mia’s mother Helen (Caroline Goodall) announces that her paternal grandmother is coming to San Francisco for a surprise visit. Mia can’t think of why her grandmother, who has never bothered to make contact before, would suddenly want a relationship. Nevertheless, she’s intrigued and agrees to the meeting.

It turns out that Mia’s grandmother is Clarisse Rinaldi (Julie Andrews), the Queen of Genovia. Mia had no idea that her deceased father was a Prince, and is quite taken aback by the news. Queen Clarisse tells Mia that the reason she is visiting now is that Genovia needs a princess in order to continue the royal bloodline, and Mia is the only living heir. Will she accept her new role or not?

From there, the film goes through all the stages that you would expect from this kind of setup: first, Mia is angry with her mom for not telling her about all of this before; next, Mia agrees to at least consider the idea of becoming a princess; then she goes through various training sessions to learn how to act and speak like a princess (this part includes the mandatory makeover, plus a scene where Mia embarrasses herself at her first formal dinner party); and then we of course get scenes at school where the other kids change their attitude towards her because of her royal status. And eventually, we get to Mia’s decision.

My Reaction: I’d never heard of this movie before today, but I guess it’s based on a whole series of books or something. At any rate, it’s obvious that the intended audience is preteen girls, so I’m going to take that into consideration here. As an adult, I found the movie overly long (an hour and fifty minutes??!) and completely predictable, but my young companion for the day seemed to really enjoy it. This was the eighth time she had seen it, and she sat through it as transfixed as though it were the first.

While I didn’t find the plot of The Princess Diaries very interesting, I did enjoy the performances. Julie Andrews was spectacular, and added so much to the movie. I can’t really imagine how boring the film would have been with someone else in that role. I also thought Anne Hathaway was very good. It took me awhile to place her as Jake Gyllenhaal’s wife in Brokeback Mountain, though. What a difference a few years makes!

Overall, I give The Princess Diaries 6.0 stars out of 10. I think it will satisfy its intended audience (young girls) but won’t do much for anyone else.

I’ve been dealing with some post-pregnancy weight issues for the last four years now. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to drop this last 10 or 15 pounds to get back to my normal weight. It’s nothing major, fortunately, but it still messes with my self esteem. In fact, I’m now at the point where I’m thinking about getting a tummy tuck to just be done with it once and for all. I know that might seem a bit extreme, but I’m really at the end of my rope here.

I wrote about a place called Rodeo Drive Plastic Surgery a while ago, so their website was one of the first stops I made on my latest fact-finding mission. It turns out that they do offer a tummy tuck procedure, and I was able to learn a lot from the descriptions and FAQ pages on the site. There was also a photo gallery that showed before and after pictures so I could see what kind of impact the procedure makes.

It’s too bad they only have offices on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, CA, otherwise I might have scheduled an appointment for an in-person consultation. As things stand now, I’ll have to keep gathering info so I can make a more informed decision about this nagging problem.

I’ve liked Ben Stiller ever since his starring role in the 1998 comedy There’s Something About Mary. Since then, I’ve seen just about every film he’s appeared in, and while I haven’t liked all of them, I usually find them at least tolerable because of his presence. So even though I wasn’t sold on the premise of Night at the Museum, I decided to see it anyway.

Stiller plays Larry Daley, a wannabe inventor who has trouble holding onto low-level jobs for any length of time. This has to stop, his ex-wife Erica (played by Kim Raver) urges, so that their son Nick (Jake Cherry) can begin to enjoy some stability in his life. That means Larry must find a job ASAP so that he doesn’t get evicted from yet another apartment, thus necessitating a move from Manhattan to Queens.

Larry goes to an employment agency and learns of a job opening as night watchman at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Before taking the job, he’s told that nobody ever lasts there. But Larry is determined to make the gig work for the sake of his son.

The current night crew consists of three watchmen who have been on the job for decades but are now being downsized. They are Cecil (Dick Van Dyke), Gus (Mickey Rooney), and Reginald (Bill Cobbs), and they part with just two pieces of advice for Larry. Don’t let anything out of the museum at night and read the manual.

Larry doesn’t know what could possibly happen in the museum at night, but he soon finds out. That’s because on his very first night, as soon as everyone else is out of the place, all the animals and people from the displays come to life. This includes monkeys and dinosaurs, as well as historical figures such as Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams), Sacajawea (Mizuo Peck), and the Roman general Octavius (Steve Coogan). There are also a handful of anonymous, generic figures such as the cowboy Jedediah (Owen Wilson).

Larry reacts pretty coolly to the situation, all things considered. He does indeed consult the manual to handle some of the bigger problems and he eventually learns that everything comes to life because there’s an ancient curse on the museum. From there, the rest of the film deals with Larry’s interactions with the various characters and their efforts to reverse the curse.

My Reaction: I’ve heard that this movie was based on a book, but I’m not familiar with the original material, so all I have to go on is what I saw on the screen. I have to say that I was pretty disappointed with Night at the Museum. While there were a few funny — or at least amusing — parts, I found the whole to be pretty boring. I thought this would be more of a family film, but while it started out that way (with Larry wanting to provide stability for his son), that relationship was barely addressed later on.

Even Stiller’s involvement couldn’t make this movie interesting or funny. I give Night at the Museum just 5.5 stars out of 10.