Modern fairy-tale plot is better at Wisconsin reality than royal fantasy

Friday, April 2, 2004

By PAULA NECHAK
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Julia Stiles and Luke Mably are no Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in this inside-out echo of the 1953 classic "Roman Holiday," but their considerable chemistry provides some charm in another in that overpopulated field of "opposites from different worlds attract" romances.

MOVIE REVIEW

THE PRINCE & ME

DIRECTOR: Martha Coolidge

CAST: Julia Stiles, Luke Mably, Miranda Richardson, Ben Miller, James Fox

RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes

RATING: PG for some sex related material and language

WHERE: Bella Bottega 11, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, East Valley 13, Factoria, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Longston Place 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza 12, Woodinville 12

GRADE: C+

British actor Mably ("28 Days Later") plays Eddie, the crown prince of Denmark. Tired of the claustrophobia of royal life and itching to find himself, he jumps ship from his half-hearted duties to attend university in America. He ends up in Wisconsin, where ambitious, hard-working farmer's daughter Paige Morgan (Stiles) is beginning her senior year with hopes of entering Johns Hopkins Medical School after graduation.

As always in this genre, the pair don't exactly mesh at first, but after a long Thanksgiving holiday at Paige's parents' farm, Eddie begins to sense something more in this responsible, precise woman who knows exactly what she wants. They recognize their attraction, but when Eddie is called home after his father, King Haraald (James Fox), becomes ill, Paige realizes the young man she loves is not "Eddie" but Edvard III, heir to the crown. She must choose between her dreams and a dream life far away from everything she had hoped to attain.

There is one small moment in the film when Paige awakes in Copenhagen (with Prague standing in for that city) and finds a beautiful yellow butterfly trapped within a bell jar next to her bed -- a present from Eddie. It is then she understands Paige Morgan can "no longer exist," as the queen, Rosalind (Miranda Richardson), informs her. It's an obvious but crucial metaphor that forms the crux of the story.

Director Martha Coolidge attempts to keep the film grounded in reality, but the movie flutters away from her control. The first half, focusing on Paige's more sensible world, works better than the second, which, despite its precision and attention to etiquette and royal detail, feels heavy and false.

It's what happens to the movie, too, in its final scenes, despite Mably's personable and charismatic presence. He almost makes us believe in fairy tales -- almost -- but not quite.