This fairy tale is about to get real.
Paige (Julia Stiles), a pre-med student from Wisconsin, is on the fast track toward her lifelong goals. Edward (Luke Mably), the Crown Prince of Denmark, is trying to escape a life he never chose. Needing an escape from his royal life, Edward treks to Wisconsin and poses as "Eddie," a university student. Now they've fallen in love and Edward is in line to become King. Paige has to choose between two dreams - becoming a princess or the doctor she's always wanted to be.
Special Agent Matti
Hmm... does this sound anything like the marriage of Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark and Our Mary™ of Tasmania? Is it life imitating art or is it the world's biggest product placement? Denmark had to pay for that $35 million wedding somehow.
But I digress... The Prince and me is a pretty standard Hollywood teen romantic comedy in which stuffy European monarchists seek out free-spirited American girls with a view to LTR, poss marr. The American fascination with royalty is mostly because it's something they can't have, having split from the ever-so-slightly over-the-top King George III a couple of hundred years ago. For them, old means "something my grandfather gave to my father". For Europeans, old means "If it isn't more than a thousand years old I don't even want to know about it". Shallow versus depth. But I won't go too far into that because I'll just end up Yank-bashing.
Not that there's anything wrong with Yank-bashing.
Julia Stiles's performance is pretty bland, even taking into account that her character is from Wisconsin. Luke Mably - perhaps cast as the Prince because he's tall, cute and British - is tall, cute and British, just the kind of dude that you'd mistake for a Prince of Denmark wandering about the United States of America. Ben Miller provides the Rupert-Everett-type humorous asides as the epitome of the gentleman's gentleman.
What The Prince and me lacks is a heart. It is romantic, it is funny, it requires tissues, but ultimately, if you miss seeing it, you won't miss it. A good try, but.
PG (Low level coarse language, sexual references)
111 minutes (1:51 hours)
Film: 24 June 2004
DVD rental: 24 November 2004
VHS rental: 24 November 2004
