Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement

Okay. You regular readers of this and especially my old blog already know how I feel about Anne Hathaway. For you latecomers: She is the future Mrs. Varkentine, and the Most Beautiful Girl In The World. Everybody caught up? However, because thus far most of her movies have been marketed to teen girls, I'm too embarassed to go see them in a theater, or even rent them on DVD. So I tend to wait and catch them on cable, which seems less icky; however slightly.

Thank god for Starz On Demand, because now I've seen the Princess Diaries sequel. How did I like it? Um...Anne Hathaway is the Most Beautiful Girl In The World. Unfortunately, this movie inexplicably wastes time on people who are not Anne Hathaway. This would have been a big risk to take even if they'd had a script...
As it is, they almost get away with it whenever Julie Andrews is onscreen. Julie Andrews is not the most beautiful girl in the world. But she has my goodwill from My Fair Lady and The Sound Of Music and Mary Poppins and Victor/Victoria and even S.O.B. So I accepted her as a brief respite. But that ended up just pointing out how this movie failed to best serve the both of them.

Ah, but there's good news tonight. While searching for Anne Hathaway pictures, I discovered a review of the movie from a site called Christian Spotlight.

Their reviewer gave it a "moral rating" of good, but expressed disappointment that

There is a feminist message in the conclusion of the film. I know that some parents will want to avoid presenting their children with the message that women are created to rule a nation, with or without a husband.

Personally, I was somewhat disappointed that the reviewer ignored the movies' explicit endorsement of homosexuality. Fortunately, a young reader of the site does not:

there was some stuff I think they could have left out of the movie. For example, when Queen Clarice, Mia and some other girls were looking up the men that she could possibly marry; Mia saw a guy that she liked and said he was handsome. Her security guard said and I quote: "His boy friend thinks he's handsome also" which should moved the rating up from a G to a PG...
--Hannah, age 11

Young Hannah neglects to mention that when Mia and her best friend hear that the man in question is gay, they raise their fists together and say "Right on!" I submit that any movie capable of vexing Christian sexism and putting something like this into a Disney picture cannot possibly be all bad.