'Cinderella Story' takes a promising premise and lays a big fat pumpkin

If you're in the mood to see a good teen flick with big laughs and a big heart, then go see "Mean Girls" starring Lindsay Lohan. If you're hankering to revisit that most famous of fairy tales "Cinderella," then walk to your corner video store and rent "Ever After" starring Drew Barrymore.

MOVIE REVIEW

A CINDERELLA STORY

DIRECTOR: Mark Rosman

CAST: Hilary Duff, Jennifer Coolidge, Chad Michael Murray, Dan Byrd

RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes

RATING: PG for mild language and innuendo

WHERE: Bella Bottega, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8, East Valley 13, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza 12, South Hill Mall, Valley Drive-in, Woodinville 12

GRADE: D

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Without a doubt, your money and time will be more wisely spent than on "A Cinderella Story," the new teen flick starring Hilary Duff.

The problem is, you'd think a reimagining of a famous fairy tale would tickle one's ... oh ... imagination. Alas, the attempts by writer Leigh Dunlap and director Mark Rosman to modernize this fable fall flatter than Cinderella's arches after a night of dancing on glass slippers.

In this take, Cinderella is Valley Girl and high school geek Sam (Duff) and Prince Charming is the popular football star and a closet poet Austin (Chad Michael Murray). Sam's dad dies in an earthquake and she's forced by her buxom and Botoxed stepmother (Jennifer Coolidge) to live in the attic and work like a slave in the family diner.

While this remake certainly remains a wholesome story appropriate for the whole family, its modern twists are trite. For instance, it's not a glass slipper Cinderella loses but a cell phone. Yawn. And in a tedious series of scenes, Cinderella and her Prince fall in (blind) love over text messages and e-mail. What could be more boring than watching two people type away at computers?

"A Cinderella Story" tries to delve into the deeper trials and tribulations of life as a teenager -- self-esteem issues, popularity games, etc. -- but it does so with none of the cleverness and humor with which "Mean Girls" approached the same subject. And although "Ever After" and "A Cinderella Story" both put a feminist spin on this rather sexist yarn, only the former is particularly fun to watch.

Sam's slapsticking stepsisters Brianna (Madeline Zima) and Gabriella (Andrea Avery) are only painfully funny (as in: Please make it stop!). Watching Coolidge portray the social-climbing stepmother is a bit like watching a one-woman freak show. You want to turn away but find you simply can't.

Sam's only friend and fellow geek, Carter, is by far the most interesting character and Dan Byrd by far the best actor. As for Duff, she's cute but -- like so much of the rest of the movie -- not particularly interesting to watch.

Perhaps worst of all, this film seems to assume its teen viewers are a bunch of drooling half-wits, going to great pains to explain everything in so much after-school-special detail. Kids these days are smarter than that. Here's betting they're smart enough to stay away from this movie.

Winda Benedetti is a Seattle-based freelance writer who can be reached at WindaBenedetti@hotmail.com.