Thoughts on the Princess Diaries Movie
I remember when I first heard that one of my favorite books, The Princess Diaries, was going to be made into a movie. I was ecstatic – in fact, I’d been wondering why it hadn’t been snatched up by a movie studio, because it was such a great story with great characters in my opinion.
Then I remember hearing tons of stuff about the movie – some good, some bad. But overall, I was really excited to see the sneak preview that my Mom and I had bought tickets for about two weeks before.
I must say, I really, really enjoyed that first viewing. (Robert Shwartzman’s performance probably had a lot to do with it.) But even though I liked it so much, I couldn’t help telling my Mom every single detail they got wrong while we were driving home.
I did see the movie five times in the theatres, but each time I saw it again, I got a little more disappointed. Now, at least a year after it was released, I try to avoid the movie as much as possible.
Especially since the third Princess Diaries book came out, I can’t help mourning for the wonderful movie that could’ve been made. Instead, I feel we got a typical movie that is at times funny more often just fluff. And don’t get me wrong, I like fluff and even write fluffy stories, but the Princess Diaries book was not full of fluff.
There are many, many things in the movie that bug me. I won’t go into all of them here, but I do want to point out some changes in the movie that I can’t forgive.
1. What they did to Grandmère’s character. She’s supposed to be nasty! And I feel even worse when I think that Julie Andrews could’ve played Grandmère to comic perfection. Instead, they give Julie Andrews a stereotypical grandma who’s tough-on-the-outside-but-has-a-heart-of-gold-on-the-inside to play.
2. Mia. First of all, Mia looked nothing like she was supposed to. In fact, they went out of their way to make her hideous (although even that didn’t work – I know quite a few people who liked her better when she was “ugly”). And it really seemed to cheapen Mia’s character to me. And another huge thing that bothered me was Mia’s biggest “goal” in life – to be invisible. How many people actually want to be invisible? Not many, and Mia is not one of them. Most people (including Mia) want to be noticed in a good way. Oh, and if they want us to believe that Mia really does have curly, unruly hair, they should at least show it curling at night or when it’s wet. Anybody with curly hair will tell you that it does not magically disappear after being straightened once.
3. Lilly. Don’t get me wrong, Heather Matzarazzo was great. But the movie really made her character less strong, and more pathetic. The biggest example of this is how the movie treated Lilly’s cable show. In the movie, Lilly is taping live, on a shoddy set with one person helping out, not to mention the fact that Lilly does nothing during the show but let Jeremiah do magic tricks. There are so many things wrong in that sentence. First of all, Lilly never tapes her shows live, and if she did, she would have plenty to talk about and would not sit there like a veal. Also, the movie seamed to give many of the causes Mia was passionate about to Lilly. I wouldn’t mind this if they made it seem like Lilly was capable of promoting them. Instead, the movie just makes Lilly seem ridiculous when she starts petitions or whatever.
4. Michael, even though he was still the most enjoyable character to me, was still off. No way would Michael be working on cars, or be in a band.* Not to mention the fact that he would probably never join a band called “Flypaper”.
5. And then of course there’s the many ways the plot was changed, characters are omitted and characters are added. I thought Jeremiah Hart was cute and funny, but I still missed Boris. Mr. O’Connell was cool, so why couldn’t they have just made him Mr. Gianini? And I really missed Mia’s dad and Tina Hakim Baba. They were both such cool, funny characters.
I’m not going to even go into how much all the plot changes bothered me. Let’s just say that the story from the book is much more entertaining than the story in the movie.
All in all, I did like the movie. It was cute. But it is certainly a far cry from the book I love. Given a choice, I would take the book any day.
Oh, and just a note to the movie-makers – next time you have a character that’s a sophomore in high school, don’t try to claim that he or she takes Algebra. Most students take Algebra in 8th or 9th grade, and Geometry or Algebra II in tenth. Get it right.
*When I wrote this, the fourth book was not yet out. So I stand corrected - yes, Michael would be in a band. But I still maintain that he would never name it something as stupid as Flypaper.
Back~Home