The reproach of Mia soon ends when she realizes her assumed late biological father was in actuality the crown prince of a small European nation, Genovia.
Screenwriter Gina Wendkos, working from Meg Cabot's novel, resorts to monotonous movie clichés: almost uniformly cruel classmates and a callous, cacophonous mob of media jackals.
TV Guide
March 09, 2009
This Cinderella fantasy transforms a geek into a princess, and teaches a few life lessons along the way.
Hardly a cross-dressing update of My Fair Lady. But in its own blanded-down fashion, it captures just enough of that show's metamorphic zest to make you wish it were.
Notions of responsibility, surrogacy, rites of passage and the value of friendship are gone through, but the highlighting of modern tropes merely serves to emphasise the film's conventionality.
