Ice Princess

Haha, so even more evidence of my obsession with kids and teens media...I signed up for Netflix and this was the first movie I queued up! Besides the fact that it's a cheesy teen girl movie, it's about figure skating which I love love love. I would have seen it while it was in theaters but I didn't have anyone to go with and I don't think it did too well at the box office because I swear it was only playing in our local theater for less than a month...

Anyway, typically, I really liked it. It has a Princess Diaries sort of feel to it, which makes sense because Meg Cabot contributed to the story. Michelle Trachtenberg as Casey did a good job being relatable and Kim Cattrall was pretty believable as the tough coach. And Trevor Blumas was in it as Teddy, Casey's love interest! (He was in Little Men, this random drama on PAX, of all networks, that I used to watch awhile ago.) Hayden Panettiere (who is apparently the new Neutrogena girl) was also pretty good as the rival-turned-friend. The whole movie was just really cute and happy, but at the same time wasn't entirely brainless. There was a lot of really honest stuff about mother-daughter relationships and going for your own dreams rather than someone elses. Which in itself is cliched, I suppose, but I bought it.

I do kind of have a problem with the whole premise of the movie in general though. For one, I don't care how much raw talent you have or how much physics you know, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to become that good of a skater in that short of a timespan. Plus all the physics Casey was spewing was just basic mechanics stuff. I took two semesters of figure skating in college, and let me tell you, knowing physics doesn't count for crap when you're falling on your ass trying to do a dang toe loop. Also I thought it was kind of sad that Casey chose skating over Harvard. I mean, yeah, skating is probably equally if not more challenging than college, but there aren't enough women in science as it is, and I don't know, it doesn't seem like the movies are helping. I'm going to fanwank that Casey ends up going back to school and becoming a physics professor or something anyway.

Oh, and I wonder how much Brian Boitano and Michelle Kwan were paid to be in this movie. I cracked up laughing when they appeared onscreen as commentators at Casey's competition...especially because in real life they would never really commentate for a random junior event. I also almost died laughing at the cheesiest romantic scene on the planet involving a Zamboni machine.

And one last thing: I hate how whenever there's a figure skating competition in a movie they use spotlights. I think this movie only did that for Casey's last program to provide dramatic effect or whatever, but real competitions are always done under blinding flourescent lighting. Come on, get it right!