Chicklet Flick
Ella Enchanted

(In the picture, Anne Hathaway and Hugh Dancy. Your under-age-16 daughters are squealing in delight right now. Photo courtesy Miramax Films.)

My old girlfriend - a sentimental slob of a lady - insisted that we see a film several years ago, called The Pirate Movie. It was a gag. It was a version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance, except gagged up for the minor acting talents of the current teen heartthrobs, Kristie McNichol of TV's Family and Christopher Atkins of The Blue Lagoon.

The "gag" part started for me when they did the classic song "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General" and the actor playing the part threw this line in the lyrics: "I'm old-er than the Beat-les but I'm young-er than the Rol-ling Stones." I gagged so heavily that I needed cortisone to open up my throat to breathe.

Making fun of an operetta that was a farce to begin with is pretty stupid. The whole point of the movie was showing that cute li'l Kristie could act and be a comic romantic lead. Well, we know how well that worked out. And with that bad memory in my head, I went to see one of the few fantasy films currently in theatres, Ella Enchanted. It isn't bad - it has some genuinely funny moments - but it is a chick flick. No, not even that. It's a chicklet flick, intended for very young girls.

Anne Hathaway, the star of The Princess Diaries, is the title character, a common girl in a parody fairytale universe. At birth, a ditzy fairy (a clichéd black lady with Miss Thang attitude) gives her a magical "gift" - she must obey every command she is given by anyone. This gets her in trouble, not only when her "evil stepsisters" discover the "gift," but from accidental things people say to her.

You have to be a little kid to accept Ella's "gift" and see how it could be turned around. This could have been a very short movie - and very ugly - if someone simply told her, "Go curl up and die."

Still, she ends up with the prince - the attractive if vapid Prince Charmont (Hugh Dancy), who is treated like a rock star by every ditzy girl in the kingdom. I'm sure every fourteen year old girl who sees the film will sigh as Ella bandages the wound of "Char" with his shirt off, showing off his freshly-shaved chest. That is the only chest we get to see in the film. Even Shrek was more bawdy than this.

Yes, Shrek. Did I mention that Shrek 2 is coming soon to theatres? Is it surprising that this film, which tries to tap the same audience, was released by Miramax, a Disney subsidiary? Is it possible that Michael Eisner, who is known for his vicious competitive tactics, and who hated being mocked in the screenplay of Shrek, made and released this film to try and spoil the box office for Universal's Shrek 2?

Which is not to say this film is bad. It's just disappointing that it sticks so closely to the Shrek storyline that it doesn't really breathe. It has minimal special effects (the big one being a CGI snake named Heston) and its costumes are strictly Central Casting. The only person in the cast with any real street cred is Eric Idle, as a narrator that pops into frame about six times in the film, delivers a quick rhyming couplet and disappears.

Seeing a mighty member of Monty Python reduced to a walk-on part isn't the saddest casting. The main villain in the film, Prince Regent Edgar, is played by Cary Elwes. Years ago, he was the cheery and irreverent hero of The Princess Bride. His career has declined to the point where he's practically twirling his mustache and cackling like Snidely Whiplash.

But if you don't walk into this film with extravagant expectations, if you're smart enough to know it's not Shrek 2, and especially if you have little girls you have to entertain for an afternoon, you can have fun with this movie. Ella isn't really much more than a role model for niceness and sweetness, but let's be honest - there are darn few of those these days. She's actually funny in a few scenes, such as when she's compelled to sing - and then told "Put a little more soul in it." And if you can listen to 80's pop tunes (another thing Eisner stole from Shrek) sung by people in period dress, you might get a giggle out of it too.

(Thomas E. Reed is a television engineer in Orlando, Florida. He knows that the Beavis and Butt-heads out there are snickering in a dirty fashion at the words "period dress." You should be ashamed of yourselves. Write him at hatemail@off-model.com and tell him that you didn't mean anything by it.