[Movies] Ice Princess

I never thought I would sit down to watch anything like this, but one lazy Sunday afternoon I ended up doing precisely that because of HBO. I'll blame Joan Cusack, since I always give her movies more than just a once over to be sure.

Ice Princess may seem like just another teeny bopper movie for little girls (and from Disney to boot!) but surprisingly it turned out to be a lot more than that. In hindsight, I certainly don't regret finally sitting down to watch it and it just goes to show that you can't judge a movie by its synopsis, I guess.

Ice Princess centers around the story of Casey Carlyle (Michelle Trachtenberg, the annoying girl from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), a high school science geek on a quest to get into Harvard. Inspiration strikes her when she decides to use applied physics to analyze the jumps and moves of figure skaters in order to help them improve. She steps away from being the outside observer and eventually learns how to skate as well in order to apply her own theories. In Disney fashion, she soon learns that she actually has a knack for the sport and this is where all the complications stem from.

I liked Casey's character because she didn't just seem stereotypically smart but she was somehow beyond that, able to translate physics into everyday situations on the fly - an ability I'd love to have. Come on, how many people can apply physics in the same way she did? While it remains a tad far-fetched, it doesn't mean that it wasn't entertaining to watch.

Hayden Panettiere of Heroes fame plays Tina Harwood, daughter of former skating star Tina Hardwood (Kim Catrall) who's life has been centered around her mother's dream of her becoming a skating star. There's a lot of shady history behind Tina's past that everyone seems to allude to and Catrall was a great pick for someone who could convey that kind of thing through the screen.

The movie is light and enjoyable but at last doesn't go through all the standard high school girlie stereotypes (or at least not excessively so), leaving you with the kind of movie that's perfect for passing a Sunday afternoon without sacrificing too many brain cells or anything like that.