DVD Review: The Prince and Me
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie has some mild language
and some passionate kissing and sexual references. The prince
comes to America because he sees a commercial for the "Girls
Gone Wild" videos and thinks that in the US girls all take
their tops off for anyone who asks. There is an interrupted
encounter that the couple might have intended to become more
intimate, but there is no implication that Eddie and Paige go
to bed together. There is a mild gay joke when characters do
not understand the relationship between Eddie and the aide his
family has sent to watch over him. There are scenes in a bar
and characters drink, including a drinking game.
- Families can talk about what Eddie and Paige saw in each other and what challenges lie ahead of them. What would be the best thing about being a prince? What would be the worst? What made Eddie's mother change her mind? How do the costumes and uniforms Eddie and Paige wear help tell the story? Families might also want to talk about the way Eddie approaches the labor dispute. Why was it so hard to resolve? What do Paige's and Eddie's mothers have in common?
THE PRINCE AND ME stars Julia Stiles as Paige Morgan, a serious and hard-working pre-med college student who has her whole life literally mapped out. She has a map of the world with pins showing all of the places she wants to visit after she completes her medical training and joins Doctors Without Borders. Luke Mably plays Edvard, the heir to the Danish crown. His life is also planned for him, but he is not the one who made the plans. He wants to postpone the inevitable by having as much fun as possible before he has to take on the responsibilities of the life he was born to. He secretly enrolls in college in Wisconsin, incognito as "Eddie," a foreign exchange student. Once he meets Paige, Edvard learns what it is like to have to earn respect and affection -- and money -- and Paige learns what it is like to listen to her heart and use her imagination. They each get to explore the other's family and culture. He races a souped-up riding lawnmower in Wisconsin farm country and she stays in a castle and goes to a ball. But falling in love is easy; finding a way to make their dreams and responsibilities fit together is not.
The title says it all. This is a classic Cinderella story about a hardworking girl from the Wisconsin dairy farm who wants to go to medical school but falls for a handsome and charming foreign exchange student who happens to be a prince in disguise. Does the course of true love run smooth? Not at first. Do they live happily ever after? What do you think?
Director Martha Coolidge has a sensitive touch in dealing with young female characters. She and Stiles do their best to make Paige more than the typical romantic comedy heroine. Mably shows some ease and charm as Eddie, who describes that other Danish prince, Hamlet, as though he is talking about himself: "The prince was young and scared and didn't feel ready for the choices he had to make." All of that helps to make up for a weak script that is too often too silly and too seldom original. By the time we have to sit through a scene of Paige trying on all the Crown jewels, they have long since run out of ideas.
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