Cinderella Remakes?

For the past few years, there have been studios that wanted to do modern remakes for one of the most popular and longest lasting stories in children fairy-tale. Cinderella is the perfect prince charming finding his princess story throughout the century ... does it really need a modern remake? There have been two such movies that were trying to achieve that goal. Only one did it properly, find out who!

A Cinderella Story is the first one released in 2004 starring Hilary Duff as Sam Montgomery the princess who lost her father during an earthquake because the support beam took his life. She is then left with her careless stepmother and her two step-sisters. Unfortunately for Sam, her father never left her a will. Thus, she had to endure her stepmother as her legal guardian and owner of Sam's father's diner. Sam was then forced to work at the diner to earn enough money in order to pay for her university tuition when she gets into Princeton University. Along the way, she meets a mysterious personality on the Internet who was very much interested in going into Princeton as well. She ends up meeting her prince charming at a Halloween dance. Unlike the traditional Cinderella story, instead of leaving behind a glass shoe, Sam accidentally drops her cellphone, thus allowing her prince charming (Chad Michael Murray) to find her.

Another Cinderella Story is the second movie to be released as a Cinderella remake in 2007. Selena Gomez stars as Mary Santiago. In this version, Mary lost her mother in a traffic accident. Her mother was a dancer for Dominque Blatt, who's a famous superstar and became Mary's legal guardian. Mary is an aspiring dance student who wanted to get into a New York dance school for her senior year. She was able to find her prince charming at the school's black and white ball. In this version of Cinderella, Mary drops her Zune, allowing her prince charming (Drew Seeley) to find her.

Both movies were well made, however, A Cinderella Story didn't really modernize the story much except for changing the setting of the story and the princess's stepmother wasn't really that evil as it was hard for the audience to acknowledge that the stepmother is evil. Much of the story played just like Cinderella and didn't really add much of its own twist into the story. However, with Another Cinderella Story, the story is really spiced up for the modern audience. The character Dominique really makes people hate her and side with Mary. In addition, the dancing portions make the movie more enjoyable and the fact that there was a good friendship bond between Mary and her best friend Tammy. You can't really see much connection in A Cinderella Story as the friendship between the characters Rhonda and Sam feels like a completely different level than the friendships between Mary and Tammy because Rhonda is a lot older than Sam, which makes her more of a mother figure than a friend. However, Tammy is Mary's best friend because they're of the same age.

Another Cinderella Story really makes the perfect modern Cinderella adaptation as it's generally more enjoyable and was better produced. Even some parts of the movie reminded me of Step Up as both movies emphasized heavily in dancing.

Rating: 3/5
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Regulatory Rating: G
Publisher: Warner Bros.

Rating: 4/5
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Regulatory Rating: G
Publisher: Warner Premiere