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The Boston Globe's Joan Anderman writes, "The transformation is, in fact, remarkable. So is the message: Inner strength is well and good, but don't forget the makeover, girls. Power without beauty still doesn't play in Hollywood fairy tales." And Francesca Chapman writes in the Philadelphia Daily News, "Its message about physical beauty is frustrating, and you might want to think twice before taking any curly-haired, eyeglass-wearing child to see it." (Keep in mind that the script comes from the same writer who gave us the sex-and-beer-drenched frat-guy-fantasy flick Coyote Ugly.)

But Movieguide's critic applauds: "The Princess Diaries is a delightful discovery. This movie has been carefully crafted. The script is coherent. The plot is intriguing. The unexpected carries viewers along, and the acting is good. In fact, the whole process of turning Mia into a princess is a process of learning how to be responsible for your actions, live a virtuous life and do the right thing in the face of adversity."

Other critics in the religious media found it filled with anything but the unexpected. The U.S. Catholic Conference describes it as a "conventional comedy": "Although mildly pleasant, Marshall's film has a pre-fab quality that even the classy Andrews cannot overcome." Preview's critic writes, "Little girls between 7 and 10 will look at Diaries as a gift, but more sophisticated viewers may feel Disney 'G'-rated films should stick to animated cartoons."

The Dove Foundation's family film reviewer Holly McClure says, "It could have been a Disney TV movie-of-the-week. Marshall failed to give this fairytale a 'magical' feel to it, and any girl knows that's the most important part of a story like this. Family movies with talent like this should look like (and be) a cut above anything you could find on television. The story is so predictable and clichéd, all it needed were commercials." Michael Elliott agrees: "I sincerely wish I could be more enthused about the end result. The film plays flat and uninspired. Using caricatures instead of characters and pratfalls instead of plot twists … Diaries never rises above the mundane quality of its script."

Mainstream critics did not criticize it for being G-rated; they panned it for being derivative. Roger Ebert writes, "Haven't I seen this movie before? Diaries is a march through the swamp of recycled ugly duckling stories, with occasional pauses in the marsh of sitcom clichés. As Diaries creeps from one painfully obvious plot destination to another, we wait impatiently for the characters onscreen to arrive at what has long been clear to the audience. If the movie is determined to be this dimwitted, couldn't it at least move a little more quickly?" Mr. Showbiz's Kevin Maynard says, "the film is broad, cute, and calculated at every turn." Salon.com's Stephanie Zacharek calls it "so aggressively bland and inoffensive that it practically recedes from the screen. Its very niceness becomes a negative virtue. Diaries is weak medicine. Sure enough, it goes down. Keeping it down is another matter."

Director Brett Ratner might be the unexpected hero of the summer—he's the first director to serve up an action movie that has almost every critic cheering. Rush Hour 2 brings back the ever-popular odd couple from the first film and turns up the cartoony antics to gain this Rush even more applause than the original. This time, Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) returns to China, where LAPD Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) comes to visit. Both get stuck chasing China's most dangerous gang after the U.S. embassy is bombed.

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August (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45