I'm sure you'll find that as you read this you will discover "a few words" to me means something short of an essay, and "simple-minded" comparative to an analytical computer. Which I will apologize for in advance I know myself too well -_- .The Princess Diaries is bound to be one of Disney's classics. There is no question about that. Many people have submitted such comments as "It wasn't as cheesy as I expected" or "It was much better than I thought." Another prevailing opinion is that the casting of the movie, and the chosen director, <more> were great. On all of these points I most heartily agree on.Now, the negatives. The strongest opposition to the movie is that it is totally unfaithful to the series by Meg Cabot. Personally, I have never read the series. BUT! Before you sigh and turn away, read the next sentence: I HAVE skimmed through the first book, in my case, "skim" means reading it in a complete random order, although by the end I did manage to read most of the book so I AM aware of the father's inability to...uh...reproduce, Lily's original Russian boyfriend who played the violin, I believe? , the grandmother's not-so-pleasant personality, etc.None of which are portrayed in the movie. Which is a great disappointment to those who are die-hard fans of the series.But. It's only common knowledge that novels remade into movies are always twisted and changed until it only resembles the original storyline. It's usually only the extremely popular or classic books, with worldwide recognition, such as The Da Vinci Code, the Harry Potter series, and The Secret Garden, that are saved from facing total transformation. And even then, most people that I'm acquainted with have confessed the novelized version is always the better.Yes, there are exceptions to what I'm saying. Of course there are. But hear me to the end.Disney, especially, has a tendency to turn everything into a children's fairy tale. Because the entire company is a company devoted to children. Its aim is not to portray a novel the way it is written, but to give a classic happy story to their fans. That is the contract it has forged with its audiences.Take the Disney classics, for example. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid...they were all based off original fairy tales. But even they were changed completely in Disney's portrayals. Belle Beauty and the Beast originally had two jealous sisters. Aladdin had a mother and an evil uncle. Ariel The Little Mermaid turned into bubbles died in the end. None of these happened in the movies.But we the Disney fans love them. Not because we loved the original fairy tales and loved to see them on screen if that's what you wanted, you would've watched the original French movie Beauty and the Beast , but because we fell in love with the movie itself, the characters the movie gave us, and the story the MOVIE told us.>>The Disney movies stand for themselves. I think that's their strong point. They don't have to rely on what novels or fairy tales they were originally based off of, but they stand as independent films, having EVOLVED from another novel or fairy tale.Everyone's watched Disney films. This should have been expected of the Princess Diaries, too. I'm sure Meg Cabot was aware of Disney's reputation--if she wanted her novel to be copied onto the screen, she would have chosen 20th Century Fox or Warner Bros. That's what J.K. Rowling did. I'M surprised so many people were shocked to find the movie was not like the novel.To be fair, I do admit that Disney HAS, on some occasion, been pretty true to the stories some of the films were based on. Holes, for example, and Chronicles of Narnia. But a storyline like Princess Diaries' couldn't go that way.>>I do think that out of all the movie companies, Disney was the best choice for this movie--the other companies may have been more faithful to the series, but only Disney would have made it a classic.And I am a personal fan of Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway, and they pulled off a great combo in this film, I believe. I also enjoyed watching Mandy Moore in A Walk to Remember, so I had my eyes on her during this movie, too.Everyone's entitled to their opinions, definitely. So while I will never tell anyone off for hating this movie, I will also take the liberty to say that The Princess Diaries, while not Academy Award material, is definitely one of my favorite and heart-warming films. <less> |