I had to give the review, enjoy!!

Review

'Ice Princess' provides girls Lutz to enjoy

By Bob Fischbach,  World-Herald Staff Writer

Talk about your niche movies.  For tweener and early teen girls, "Ice Princess" is just about perfect.

Two teenagers go head to head with their moms, both of whom are living their dreams through their daughters.  But the daughters both know their moms' dreams are not their own.

In other words, the teens are teaching the parents a thing or two, without rebelling in any harmful or immoral way.  This a G-rated Disney, after all.

Throw in a cute-guy love interaction, some figure skating, a cosmetics makeover and a little attention to clothes, and you've got a winning formula--for young girls.

But for the rest of us, it is definitely formula, and though it bends the rules a little bit, "Ice Princess" doesn't dare break any.  Squeaky clean and predictable in al but the smallest plot turns, it's not likely to interest tweener boys much, except that the girls are cute.

Parents and grandparents who want an outing with the kids have a safe destination, if not a particularly scintillating one.

Michelle Trachtenberg play Casy, a science geek whose single mom (Joan Cusack) is pushing her toward Harvard.  Case decides to do a physics project based on skating moves, and she gets hooked on the sport.

Hayden Panettiere is Gen, a slightly stuck-up girl who is tired of the figure-skaing grind pushed by her skating coach mom (Kim Cattrall).  Gen's brother drives the Zamboni machine, so it's only a matter of time before he and Casey thaw that ice-rink chill.

It's saas if they rewrote that number from "Oklahoma!" about how the farmer and the cowman (geek and prom queen) should be friends.  At first hostile, Gen learns Casey is not as bad as her hair and clothes.  Casey, meanwhile, finds that under all those sequins, Gen has a heart.

Cattrall and Cusack are in familiar roles, one playing a ruthless witch (she's the ice princess, and there's no sex in this city) and other a bookish feminist.

Like many ice-skating movies, the competition footage has to rely on stand-ins for jumps and spings.  The editing is pretty good in disquising it here.

But the messages to young girls are excellent.  Know yourself, find your dream and perservere.  Studiesn are important.  So are friends.  Talk to your parents with honesty and respect.  Reach high.

Like "The Princess Diaries,"  this movie throws at least a modicum of reality into its depicition of teens, and competitive skating is lightly skewered.  Winning performances from all four principal characters keep "Ice Princess" sliding smoothly to its foregone conclusion.

Quality:   Three Stars

Stars:      Michelle Trachtenberg, Hayden Panettiere, Kim Catrall, Joan Cusack

Director:   Time Fywell

Rating:  G

Running time:  One hour, 32 minutes

Star-Net-Nexus

Over 4 Million Hits

Bringing The Fans Together

Over 8,000 fans in 52 groups