Ice Princess

Ice Princess

"Ice Princess" was not a commercial success despite generally favorable reviews and Disney's costly promotional campaign. The promotional poster is great but did not make much of a difference. What went wrong? At its core "Ice Princess" is a modern remake of 1949's "It Happens Every Spring". In that film Ray Milland plays an underpaid college professor and long-suffering St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan. He is in his college lab one day working on developing a wood preserving chemical when a baseball comes through the window and smashes all the lab equipment. The chemicals get mixed into a new compound that repels wood. When rubbed on a baseball it causes the ball to jump away from wooden bats. He realizes the possibilities and takes a leave of absence to pitch St. Louis to the World Series. Most of the entertainment comes from having someone who has spent his life in the academic world trying to fit in with the much cruder world of professional sports. "Ice Princess" makes the main character a high school science wizard, changes the gender, and moves the idea to a skating rink. It is here that it hits its first problem. The professor in "It Happens Every Spring" is only playing baseball to earn enough money to marry his sweetheart, he doesn't feel comfortable taking on that responsibility on his low teaching salary. One of the themes is the disparity in salary between the two professions. Throughout the film baseball is always just his "temporary" occupation until he returns to teaching, the film is appealing because he always retains his identity as a professor. "Ice Princess" derails because Casey becomes a figure skater in order to change her identity and realize her "feminine potential", although this is masked by an unconvincing claim that she is pursuing her dream. Which is totally bogus, as someone has already commented: "as you watch you think to yourself, wow she is pretty, smart, and she is not even trying, which in any other situation leads you to believe that she was better than the girls who are popular and stupid". Many viewers spend the movie hoping that she will keep her more likable identity as the smart outsider girl. Plus the idea is overused, so much so that "Not Another Teen Movie" satirized the metamorphosis of the: "Ugly Duckling Girl Who's Really a Babe Underneath". The joke being that both Chyler Leigh's and Michelle Trachtenberg's ugly ducklings look at least as good as the babes they transform into. The basic premise of "It Happens Every Spring" was credible and although it raised some ethical issues, it was highly amusing. The "Ice Princess" premise is not even remotely credible and the disconnect is compounded because the premise is more central to the story. Finally, unlike "It Happens Every Spring's" almost exclusive focus on its main character, "Ice Princess" is at least one story too many as you have several mother-daughter subplots which are contrived, stale, and boring. Perhaps most amazing about the low box office for "Ice Princess" is that it is significantly padded by Michelle Trachtenberg's huge male fan base. This means that even more of the movie's target audience is staying away than the attendance figures would indicate. Seeing Trachtenberg is almost reason enough to watch the film, she is much better in her physics student identity but her scenes with Hayden Panettiere and Kristen Olson are also good. Although a failure commercially, it was a good career move for Michelle and a great showcase for her beauty and growing acting skills. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

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