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The computer doesn’t make the jumps, you do”. Casey speaks this line to Gen in Ice Princess. Ice Princess most definitely is a formula movie. Yes, it does everything that it is supposed to do and yes, it ends just as we all thought it would. In fact, it even has the dreaded scene where the gifted young heroine is performing and she looks out to the audience…and there in the audience is her mother who, to her surprise, is already there. She has come to the semi finals without telling her and it is now smiling and nodding which like several other parents in several films means she is realizing after all parents do that their child has done something quite magical.
Absolutely! So the movie did works despite all those details. I remember not watching the first 30 minutes or so, and then to my surprise, I was entertained. It follows the same patterns as ‘Shall We Dance’ and ‘Saturday Night Fever’ but does not conform to the traditional expectations. This happens in part due to the screenplay not sticking to the stereotypical sadistic good-versus-evil narrative structure. There are real character developments. It is also a large part thanks to the acting. And also, the actresses in the movie can actually skate or at least look like they can. It’s no shock, given that two of them are figure skaters, but the shock is that Michelle Trachtenberg appears to be able to skate as well. I doubt that girl on the ice was a body double, but Variety, the showbiz bible claims, ‘Four different skaters substitute for Trachtenberg during the more difficult bits.’
In the movie, Trachtenberg portrays Casey Carlyle, an exceptional student of science in high school who garners hopes of winning a scholarship from Harvard by demonstrating a physics project.
Her teacher urges her to come up with a more creative topic, and she has an epiphany: Maybe I can film figure skaters, break down their movements on my computer, and create a set of physics equations that, not only describes what they do, but also suggests how they can improve.
Casey is a self-proclaimed science nerd – and pretty shy. “I can’t talk to anyone I haven’t known since kindergarten,” she claims. The location of the rink she frequents in her spare time is in her hometown of Connecticut. It is owned by Tina Harwood (Kim Cattrall) who was disqualified from representing the Olympics at Saravejo. Tina now teaches her daughter Gen (Hayden Panettiere) how to win the championship.
With Casey’s computer program, she can now perform the analysis. She breaks down the moves and physics of skating to give advice to Gen and other competing skaters. Interestingly, Casey has loved skating for as long as she can remember, and now that she finally has the means to pursue figure skating, she is motivated to do so.
This is shocking news for her mom (Joan Cusack), who is a teacher and feminist trying to direct Casey’s ambitions toward Harvard, remarking, “Figure skaters have no shelf life.” At the same time, Gen reveals that she envies Casey, saying, “I hate to train all the time. I’d love to have a real life like you.” To her mom Gen says, “I’m sick and tired of pretending to be a dunce in math because I don’t have time to do the homework.”
The movie, devised by Hadley Davis and directed by Tim Fywell, opens with a premise and then develops it. In our case, two obsessive stage mothers and their two driven over achieder daughters who want to switch places to the exasperation of their mothers (there are no fathers around apart from a rather pleased Korean American daddy). This gives us more depth than we are ready for and more acting too because the protagonists do not conform to the expected behavior patterns established by the GCFDDPO formula (Gifted Child Follows Dream While Parents Are Not In Support). They come out and they speak out and they surprise the audiences with their very existence.
What’s important is not whether all the actors actually do their skating, but that they convincingly portray figure skaters, and add realism to their lives as school children. Gen’s first scene makes it look like she is the popular blonde bimbo that every high school movie has. Wrong! She befriends Casey and together the girls assist each other in figuring out what they want to do.
Casey’s classmate said bluntly, “I think it’s because of her computer.” At a particular moment, when a skater executes a really lovely move on the ice, it is said. “No,” she argues, “When she does, the computer doesn’t make the jumps.” “Ice Princess” starts out with something like a computer formula, too. But the formula makes no moves. Yes, “Ice Princess” takes it to another level and that’s what this movie does. This movie is just about perfect for teenagers, and it is a shock that even their parents are granted the permission to think for themselves.
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