We've seen this plot before but not these ice routines

July 21, 2005

By NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News

Princesses, at least the non-ogre ones, are passé.

That seems to be the message audiences sent to Ice Princess, the most recent in a busy stream of princess movies, which only scraped out $24 million at the box office.

It's too bad, because while the plot, by Princess Diaries writer Meg Cabot, is predictable and the ending sets new heights for Hollywood silliness, the skating is something to see. Director Tim Fywell put together a mix of appealing actors with real-life skaters who learned to act on the set.

Michelle Trachtenberg plays Casey, a high school physics whiz who turns the study of skating leaps and twirls into an award-winning physics research project that she hopes will get her into a good college. What she doesn't count on is falling in love with the subject she studies. Before she knows it, she's working at a hot-dog stand to pay for a beginning skating class with all the little kids. And she quickly advances to the competitive level (we did say this was unrealistic, didn't we?).

But the competitive world of skating brings with it a lot of backbiting, which makes the story more interesting. Kim Cattrall plays a ruthless coach determined to advance her own daughter (Hayden Panettierre) at Casey's expense. The other competitors have their own prickly personalities. And, after some formulaic romance with the boy who runs the Zamboni, we get the Turning Point twist in which Ms. Cattrall and Casey's mother (Joan Cusack) face off over who will have the most influence in Casey's life.

The extras aren't much: an alternate introduction, some deleted scenes and two music videos. But on the plus side, there's a cameo by Michelle Kwan and, like Princess Diaries, Ice Princess is rated G. You can't say that about many films aimed at teens.