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Michelle Trachtenberg, late of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” stars as Casey Carlyle, high school senior and physics wiz, who applies concepts of aerodynamics to figure skating for a project to impress the physics faculty at Harvard. All she would have had to do in order to get into Harvard Law School was videotape herself wearing a bikini. You know, like Reese Witherspoon. I guess the Physics Dept. takes itself more seriously than the Law School does. Bend and snap, girls; bend and snap.

Anyway, Casey then decides to try her formulas out on herself, being a nifty pond skater and all, and hey presto, the coach and other girls at the skating rink discover that she’s pretty good.

This is the dream, isn’t it? If the film were aimed at older girls, the handsome guy on the football team would recognize Casey’s Ugly Ducklingism. I wish I owned the intellectual property copyright to Cinderella.

The rink is owned and operated by former shamed figure skater Tina Harwood, which is like Tonya Harding—get it?—who once got kicked out of the Olympics for deliberating injuring a rival. Tina is now training her daughter Gen (Kim Cattrall and Hayden Panettiere), and Casey thinks Tina wants to help her, too. Tina’s son Teddy (Trevor Blumas) is also on hand to make puppy eyes at Casey and drive the Zamboni. What more could any young actor want from a script? Trachtenberg is cute but Zambonis are really cool.

Then there’s Casey mom Joan (Joan Cusack) who votes Yea for Harvard and Nay for skating. She doesn’t even suggest skating as a hobby because no one can be empowered while wearing a skimpy costume with sequins on it. She must not watch pro wrestling.

The picture was directed by Tim Fywell and written by Hadley Davis from a story by Meg Cabot (“Princess Diaries”), and underneath all the teen romance, mother/daughter bonding, girl power, and corn there is one thing I liked that I don’t find often in these prove-yourself-through-sports stories. It’s the fact that Casey wants to skate and she’s not being pressured to triumph at something her community has chosen for her. She’s not trying to conform to make other people like her. I hate movies that push that message on to kids.

I’ve been making fun of the movie because I’m a mature man—age-wise, anyway—and the pleasure I get from looking at female figure skaters is not the like the one this movie’s intended audience gets. But approaching the picture from their standpoint, it’s not half bad. Trachtenberg is fine in the lead and turned herself into a pretty nifty skater so she could make at least some of the moves herself. She is doubled in some of the long shots.

All things considered, your daughters could do worse than watching “Ice Princess.” But in the theater, don’t let them sit too close to any middle-aged man who is there alone.

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originally posted: 12/21/05 08:39:47
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