Movie: The Princess Diaries

I just caught this one on ABC Family, and it was very cute! I had always meant to watch and it just never gotten around to it yet (am I the only person who hasn't seen it?) so when I was channel surfing tonight and caught it almost at the beginning, I was excited to finally be able to cross this one off the list. I love Julie Andrews anyway, having grown up with an appreciation of musicals instilled by my family at an early age, the Sound of Music is one of my favorites, and along with Hector Elizondo, I knew I would enjoy it!

Mia is an unpopular tenth-grader who lives with her mother, who is an artist, and has two very good friends Lilly and her brother Michael. Just before her 16th birthday, Mia's paternal grandmother comes for a visit from Genovia. It is then she finds out that her father, who had died a couple months before in a car crash, was the crown prince of the fictional European country, and that she herself is now the crown princess and only heir left of the Renaldi family.

What follows is a bit of a My Fair Lady story from the teenage point of view, with all the harshness of highschool, but very funny and endearing as Mia learns more about herself and what it means to be a royal. She learns a few life lessons as do we all about who her real friends are, unfortunately in a very public way, and nearly decides to renounce her claim. She almost runs away, but at the very last, receives a bit of help from her departed father in realizing the opportunity before her, and of course steps up to accept the responsibility.

The plot is of course pretty predictable, but the real fun of this story is the events that lead up to Mia accepting her position. I really enjoyed this one, Anne Hathaway, Julie Andrews and Hector Elizondo were very lovable characters, and I look forward to the next movie, Princess Diaries 2, and to reading the books the movies are based on. If you're looking for a cute fluffy movie, this would be a good one!