The shoe fits

A Cinderella Story boasts the kind of pop-music-enhanced quick edits that seem required in anything aimed at teenagers these days. But embedded somewhere amid the cacophony is a fairly nice story, loosely inspired by the beloved fairy tale.

Sam Martin (Hilary Duff) is your typical San Fernando Valley teenage girl, except she’s not that typical. She’s exceptionally bright, very hard-working and quite ambitious (her dream is to go to Princeton). Of course she might never get to live her dream, thanks to her particularly nasty stepmother, Fiona (Jennifer Coolidge), and two equally mean stepsisters, Brianna and Gabriella (Madeline Zima and Andrea Avery).

The one bright spot in Sam’s otherwise stressful life is an anonymous online relationship with a classmate who goes by the screen name "Nomad." His real identity is Austin (Chad Michael Murray), the high-school quarterback. The two soul mates agree to rendezvous at the school costume dance. Things get complicated when Sam has to hightail it out of there before she can come clean to "Prince Charming."

One of the most admirable elements of A Cinderella Story is that the movie stays in the real world. Although it’s clear the film was based on Cinderella, it resists any urges to cross over into fairy-tale world (magic wands, turning mice into drivers, etc.) and prefers to get its magic from everyday life. Here, Cinderella/Sam’s fairy godmother is Rhonda (Regina King), merely a supportive coworker who comes to the rescue like any good friend might in a crisis. The magic slipper is a cell phone that Sam leaves behind in haste at the dance, yet that’s not the main thrust of the film. In fact, the soul mates only come together when both Sam and Austin can muster the courage to be the people they’re meant to be. Not a bad message, if perhaps clumsily delivered at times.

The film itself maintains a light tone, with the evil stepmother being more of a buffoon than really evil. Even if she does do some pretty nasty things to Sam, the movie never stoops to melodrama (although it comes close once). A Cinderella Story does, however, have difficulty keeping its focus and, often, there is simply too much going on.

Duff herself is quite appealing in the lead role, even if it’s more than a stretch to believe that on her worst day, a million guys wouldn’t be trying to hit on her in the hallway. Coolidge is both funny and quite mean as Fiona. The never-less-than-great King injects both humanity and humor in a role that borders on stereotypical.

The main goal of A Cinderella Story is to appeal to Duff’s gazillion young female fans. In that respect, it succeeds beyond its wildest dreams.

A Cinderella Story
PG
Starting tomorrow at area theaters
Two-and-a-half reels out of four

Recommended Rental

Starsky and Hutch
PG-13
Available Tuesday

If an Oscar were handed out for ingenious casting, Starsky and Hutch would be the frontrunner for Snoop Dogg’s hilarious turn as lovable pimp Huggy Bear. But beyond the stunt casting, Snoop is very funny. Overall, the movie manages to be both a loving homage to the popular 1970s television show and a wicked spoof of the pop culture of that decade. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson play the lead roles very much in the spirit of the movie. They’re playing it straight yet making us laugh most of the time. Even Fred Williamson does a nice job in the role played by Bernie Hamilton in the TV show.