Every so often, browsing a second-hand stall or thrift shop, I come across a DVD which I have never heard of, but which looks like a good film. ‘Ice Princess’ was one that caught my eye recently, so I paid my fifty cents. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but assumed it would be fairly lightweight and innocent as it’s a Disney production with a U rating.
Casey (Michelle Trachtenberg) is the main character in the story. She’s sixteen, and a physics geek. She has quite a pushy mother (Joan Cusack) who is determined that she should get into Harvard University. Her physics teacher thinks she’s in with a chance of a scholarship, if she can come up with an unusual and compelling research project.
One of the things Casey does for exercise and relaxation is ice skating. She hasn’t had lessons; she skates around a large pond outside her home. But in conversation with some girls at her school who are skating in competitions, she starts wondering if she could digitise their movements, and calculate what would help with faster turns, higher jumps and other moves.
Inevitably she gets into trouble when she starts trying to film some of her classmates training, but is able to persuade one of the coaches, Tina (Kim Cattrall), and the parents that she’s not a spy, and not planning to hurt anyone or publish anything other than in her project. She gets quite excited about it, and makes some interesting discoveries… then realises that if she’s going to make this project truly personal, she should take some lessons herself and apply her principles to her own skating.
Casey and her mother don’t have spare money - her mother is a teacher, and her father isn’t in the picture - but she works in fast-food places to earn sufficient to take lessons with much younger children. And, perhaps inevitably, she turns out to have a lot of talent.
So there’s a lot of skating in the film, there’s some tension including some quite heated scenes between Casey and her mother who would be horrified if she realises how much time her daughter is giving to skating, and how much she enjoys it. There’s tension, too, with the coach Tina and her daughter Gen (Hayden Panettiere), who is being trained every moment of the day, unable to eat what she wants to eat, or to spend any time with her boyfriend. But Amy, unlike some of her friends, is not passionate about skating and would really like a more ordinary life…
It’s quite an old film now, made in 2005, but it doesn’t come across as dated (other than the lack of mobile phones). The characters are mostly three-dimensional; I particularly liked Tina’s son Teddy (Trevor Blumas) who drives the machine that smooths the ice after it’s been used. Gen has two friends who are committed skaters, also very talented, and there’s quite a bit of humour in their interactions, albeit a bit caricatured.
There’s nothing very deep about this film; it’s a ‘follow your dream’ theme, not really surprising for Disney and although there’s a bit of unpleasantness towards the end, and an attempt at sabotage, it’s all resolved relatively easily. Some of the parent-daughter scene are quite tense, but again everything turns out well at the end.
It made a pleasant hour-and-a-half’s viewing. It’s the kind of film that would be suitable for anyone, even fairly young children, although unlikely to be of much interest to anyone younger than about ten. A younger child might need to know that there are no princesses involved. The only ‘extras’ are some deleted scenes, which were interesting to watch.
Recommended if you want something light for the whole family.
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