A cinderella story review

A Cinderella Story
A Cinderella Story tells a tale told too many times before. With a few modern twists, Cinderella delivers a forgettable yet marginally likeable adaptation of the fairy taleclassic.

Sam Montgomery (Duff) is a high school senior who after losing her father, must wait hand and foot on her Botox-enhanced stepmother, Fiona (Coolidge) and her ditzy stepsisters. Sam works sevendays a week at the family diner while maintaining her "A" average at high school so that she will be accepted at Princeton. Besides her good looks and sweet personality, Sam feels ostracized from therest of the school with the exception of her friend Carter (Byrd). Her only other companion is a cyber boyfriend. Communicating by text messaging and email, the two schoolmates fall in love withouteven knowing each other’s name. When they meet for the first time at the Halloween Dance, she is surprised when her Prince Charming turns out to be Mr. Popularity Austin Ames (Murray). Although she’sonly wearing an eye mask, Ames’s inferior perception skills fail him as he doesn’t realize who she is. (Ames would be perfect for the Jimmy Olson role in Superman. He would never realize Clark Kent’ssecret identity.) Sadly, Sam must return to her job before midnight, and as she flees the ball, she loses her cell phone.

I honestly did not realize a movie could squeeze this many Hollywood clichésinto 86 minutes. Beside the Cinderella characters, we also have the “Mean Girls”, the sci-fi geek, the evil rich kids, the geeky yet innocent male friend, the overbearing dad etc. Did anybody inHollywood go to a real high school? I think Director Mark Rosman watched Heathers and 90210 one too many times.

The primary problem with this movie isn’t the re-imagining of Cinderella it’s theludicrous background characters and unrealistic school settings. I’m not sure about anyone else, but I sure wasn’t allowed to send instant messages during school nor did school seemingly start at 11am. A...