Undeniably sweet & entertaining

Fairy tales can come true. In fact, it happened very recently to an Aussie commoner, Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, who married Danish Crown Prince Frederick in Copenhagen only last May.

The premise of the Hollywood film The Prince & Me therefore is quite believable especially since the fictional hero here is also a Danish Crown Prince who marries an American farm girl from a small town in Wisconsin.

Now on its second-week run, the story of The Prince & Me opens simultaneously in Wisconsin where Paige Morgan is studiously preparing for her academic requirements and over in Denmark where the playboy Prince Edvard lives a carefree life – racing cars and chasing girls (or the girls chasing him).

He only develops an interest in becoming an exchange student in a Wisconsin university because he gets the wrong information on TV that this American state is a market for easy girls with large breasts.

The first girl he encounters in Wisconsin, however, is Paige Morgan and he gets fresh with her. Not exactly an easy lay, she fights back and gets even with him. To her consternation, they end up as lab partners in chemistry class but they have no chemistry between them and he turns out to be the worst partner in the world (he shows up late for class). Fortunately, he makes up for that by tutoring her in her Shakespeare lessons.

Soon, they begin to like each other and during Thanksgiving at her house, they fall in love – without him telling her his real identity. But the paparazzi trace his whereabouts in Wisconsin and they blow his cover. After a brief quarrel about how he lied to her and that usual stuff, she follows him in Denmark and is given the royal treatment as the soon-to-be wife of the future king.

Amidst all that pomp and pageantry, she begins having second thoughts about embracing a life of royalty and flies back to Wisconsin to finish her undergraduate course and hopefully enter medical school (John Hopkins). And there lies the question if she and her prince will live happily ever after.

I was all set to bring my anti-diabetes pills when I saw the Prince & Me because I thought the film was going to be saccharinely sickening. It turned out that wasn’t necessary.

The Prince & Me is temperately sweet – with just the right amount of romance and even humor. Even the portrayal of the lead characters – Julia Stiles as Paige Morgan and Luke Mably as Prince Edvard – comes as close to reality as possible. While I did say that Stiles’ Paige Morgan is no easy lay, she is at the same time no vestal virgin in the film – especially since she and her prince are caught by the paparazzi smooching in between shelves in one corner of the school library. And the prince here is not the picture perfect royalty we see in most fairy tales. In fact, he’s more like one of the family members of England’s Queen Elizabeth II as portrayed in London’s sleazy tabloids.

It also helps that the two lead stars are relatively good performers – particularly Julia Stiles who may not be the prettiest actress in Hollywood, but has enough charm to be able to carry a film with the help of the right leading man – in this case, Luke Mably with whom she has fantastic screen chemistry. (Stiles’ deep speaking voice reminds me of Tina Monzon Palma who used to dub the voices of local actresses starting out in the movies.)

The engaging performances of Stiles and Mably – plus the creatively written screenplay of Prince & Me –makes the film good enough viewing. It’s no great movie (it certainly is no Roman Holiday!), but it is undeniably entertaining and worth the viewer’s trip to the cinema.