FanUnity B(uzz)log

Having kids changes your life in many ways. One of the more trivial ways is that you end up watching a lot of movies and TV shows you would have never otherwise watched. Such it is with "Ice Princess" and me.

"Ice Princess" follows the story of high school junior Casey Carlyle (Michelle Trachtenberg), a physics whiz who is all but a sure thing to get into Harvard. Her mom, a college professor, has been dreaming of Casey getting into Harvard for a long, long time and sees it as their shared dream. Not so much. Casey enjoys ice skating and decides to do her big physics project on it. She figures that she can quantify the physics behind ice skating jumps. Tina Harwood, a sort of older Tonya Harding disgraced-former-champ type, runs the local skate rink and teaches skating to some phenoms. After mistaking her for a spy, Tina decides to let Casey hang around and film the skaters for her project. Not only does Casey end up giving physics-inspired tips to the phenom skaters, she becomes one herself.

The heart of the story is a very nice parallel of two sets of mothers and daughters where the mother is pushing her dream on the daughter. With Casey and her mom (Joan Cusack), it is the Harvard dream. With Tina Harwood (Kim Cattrall) and her daughter Gen (Hayden Panettiere), it is skating. Both moms think they are doing what's best for their little girls, but are only really living their dreams vicariously.

It was very refreshing to see "Ice Princess" include Casey's ultra-liberal mom in this parallel in a way that made her look nearly as bad as Tina Harwood. Typically the fanaticism of the left is not treated the same by Hollywood as all other types of fanaticism. It is here. Good stuff.

"Ice Princess" is a nice movie for young girls and their parents. It carries the same old follow-your-dream-anything-is-possible message for the kids and reminds the adults not to get so caught up in their own idea of what their kid's hopes and dreams should be so as to rob them of the opportunity to carve out a path of their own.

3/5 Stars.