BEFORE: Julia Stiles carries over from "Save the Last Dance", and there are another two Julia Stiles movies on my list that could have fit in here, however I don't have room for them, and also they have been deemed to make an important connection between other films on the list, so they have been tabled until next year. I have a possible chain for next time that is 21 movies long, and other smaller ones that are five, seven or two films long, maybe I can connect some of those and fill up February of 2027 - but that will be harder if I watch those other Julia Stiles films this year, OK? This film's been on my list for a while, I think it was on that crashed DVR that I had to return, but when I got the replacement DVR a year ago the film was still running on cable so I just re-recorded it. I'll try to get it burned on to a DVD now that I've watched it.
This is the third film of this year with James Fox in it, though - but leading the pack right now is Celia Imrie with 5 appearances, she's someone who usually plays non-lead characters, but once you see her in British films, you'll notice her a lot. I know her, of course, for playing a Naboo pilot in "Star Wars: Episode I" but I don't have her autograph yet, and I probably should work on that.
Here's the line up for tomorrow, Tuesday, March 3, Day 18 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", and the themes are "Oscar Goes on the Air" and "Oscar Goes on a Trip":
6:00 am "Mr. Dodd Takes the Air" (1937)
7:45 am "Foreign Correspondent" (1940)
10:00 am "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955)
12:00 pm "It Should Happen to You" (1954)
1:45 pm "Being There" (1979)
4:00 pm "My Favorite Year" (1982)
6:00 pm "The Sunshine Boys" (1975)
8:00 pm "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956)
11:15 pm "A Passage to India" (1984)
2:15 am "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956)
4:30 am "A Little Romance" (1979)
I think I'm hitting for SEVEN today - since I've seen all the Hitchcock movies, that's "Foreign Correspondent" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much", plus I've seen "Being There", "My Favorite Year", "The Sunshine Boys", "Around the World in 80 Days" and "A Passage to India". So this has to improve my standings, I'm now at 89 seen out of 212, that's just under 42% now!
THE PLOT: At college Paige meets Eddie, a student from Denmark, whom she first dislikes but later accepts, likes and loves; he turns out to be Crown Prince Edvard. Paige follows him to Copenhagen and he follows her back to school with a plan.
AFTER: I'm somewhat torn on this one, because at its heart it's the last gasp of the patriarchy, like even in 2004, how could someone make a "prince falls in love with a regular girl and takes her away from her commoner life" movie? At that point in time, we should have been over all the Cinderella or Snow White fantasies, exemplified in Disney movies where characters sing "Someday, My Prince Will Come". Like, come on, women can vote now and get jobs, we had equal rights legislation and almost an amendment, women are doctors and senators and they're not just dating to get into a higher tax bracket, or to be "rescued", this all should have gone the way of the dinosaur. And the film acts like it KNOWS this, because Paige is in college with hopes of applying to medical school, and she's not dating anyone, and that's by choice. She's complete as she is, no need for a relationship to make her feel "whole".
But even though the relationship is rocky at first because of how chauvinist "Eddie" is, he turns up as her lab partner, as her co-worker, and she's forced to train him how to slice deli meats, and he slowly wins her over by virtue of spending so much time together. And when the paparazzi eventually track the errant Prince down and take photos of the two of them making out in the library, her first reaction after finding out that he's a Danish prince isn't, "Oh, wow, what an opportunity!" but instead she's mad because he lied about it. Yes, a lie of omission is still a lie. Even more surprising is that she takes him back after that, I guess she starts to see how dating a price could open some doors for her, socially and financially. Their studying alliance is still solid, where she helps him pass chemistry and he gives her some unique insight into Shakespeare's "Hamlet" - you know, being a Danish prince himself, who could know better about what's going on in Hamlet's brain?
It wasn't just on-the-job cold cut slicing that Eddie had to learn, he was way off about American culture, as all he knew about it was that American women are likely to take their tops off during spring break or Mardi Gras. That's probably why he wanted to come to America in the first place, though he told his parents that he wanted an American education, and to learn more about how the working class operates. What a bunch of B.S., but it got him to Wisconsin, with his butler in tow. NITPICK POINT: I would have to imagine that special diplomatic arrangements would have to be made for a foreign prince to study at an American university, and the college HAD to know about this, because they gave him a dorm room with bunk beds so his butler would have a place to sleep. Don't you think the news about a European prince attending an American college would leak out at some point, or the college would want to use this information to promote itself?
We also don't quite know how the paparazzi tracked Eddie down in Wisconsin, only that they were getting bored covering the King's press conferences and not Prince Edvard's torrid affairs. So that's N.P. #2 I guess, because the film doesn't tell us this, the photographers just show up one day - it would have made sense if there had been an American news story about the infamous "lawnmower races" in Wisconsin over Thanksgiving weekend, and if the foreign press had picked up the story, someone in Denmark might have recognized him, that could have been one way to go.
But we'll never know, because Edvard is called home to Denmark right after finals, because his father, King Haraald, is very sick. He wants to abdicate the throne and crown his son as the new King, but this process apparently takes a while. While giving an oral exam about Shakespeare (NP #3: I thought oral exams were only part of a masters degree, not a basic bachelor's level literature class...) Paige is reminded during a discussion of "Othello" that she loves Eddie, and so she books an expensive flight to Denmark with the help of her friends. Bear in mind this film was made before we had Kayak, Travelocity or even Priceline...
The king's advice to Eddie is that if he loves Paige, he should marry her for love, it's a better fit than trying to find an available princess somewhere in the world, anyway the arranged marriage thing seems even more outdated than the monarchy itself. The queen is against Eddie marrying a commoner, however after she witnesses her son solving a labor dispute by quoting what he learned on Paige's family's farm, she changes her mind and not only approves of the marriage, but grants Paige access to the royal jewels to wear during the coronation ball. This part is really just female porn, wish fulfillment to have access to very expensive jewelry without having to pay for it. And to have royal dressmakers make her a gown, to have servants ready to make her whatever food she wants to eat whenever she wants it. Sure, a girl could get used to this kind of treatment, I know I could.
But eventually Paige remembers that she set out to become a doctor working in impoverished countries, and feels that by becoming a princess, she would be betraying herself and not following through with her own career. The acceptance letter from Johns Hopkins that falls on the floor, unread, is just one of several plot threads that never really gets followed up throughout the movie. Anyway, Paige breaks off the engagement and goes back home, and so Denmark is left with a very sad, lonely king. For a while, anyway, because Eddie realizes that it's not the 1600's any more, and that he can wait for Paige to become a doctor or spend time in a Third World country and that a woman's dreams are important, too.
The problem here is that the film tries to have it both ways, you can't play the wish fulfillment card and have the rich European prince swoop in and rescue the commoner AND also portray a woman who doesn't need rescuing, suggesting that the old ways of the monarchy and patriarchy are a thing of the past. Can falling in love with a prince be both a good thing and a bad thing at the same time? Perhaps, but why make this so much more complicated than it needs to be? If she can be both a doctor and a princess and that's an obvious fact, why does it take so long for them to figure this out? Why not become a princess first and then use her position to study medicine? They probably have decent medical schools in Copenhagen, why isn't that an option? Or Paige can use her position as a princess to support or fund medical research, which would also be quite helpful? Jesus, if you have the chance to be married to a prince, take the damn win!
The story also calls to mind the story of Meghan Markle, who met Prince Harry in 2016. Although she was famous for being on two TV series and appearing in a couple movies, still she was considered a "commoner" as far as the U.K.'s royal family was concerned. She seems to have taken to the whole Duchess thing, so this 2005 film kind of got something right in advance - it happens. Both "Save the Last Dance" and tonight's film have sequels that DO NOT feature Julia Stiles, so obviously I'm skipping them. The chain must remain unbroken.
Directed by Martha Coolidge (director of "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge")
Also starring Luke Mably (last seen in "28 Days Later"), Ben Miller (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), Miranda Richardson (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget"), James Fox (last seen in "The Double"), Alberta Watson (last seen in "The Lookout"), John Bourgeois (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Zachary Knighton (last seen in "Come and Find Me"), Stephen O'Reilly, Elisabeth Waterston, Eliza Bennett (last seen in "Nanny McPhee"), Devin Ratray (last seen in "Side Effects"), Clare Preuss (last seen in "Loser"), Yaani King (last seen in "In the Cut"), Eddie Irvine, Angelo Tsarouchas (last seen in "The Recruit"), Jacques Tourangeau, Joanne Baron (last seen in "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge"), Stephen Singer (last seen in "Obvious Child"), Sarah Manninen, Tony Munch (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), John Nelles (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Claus Bue, James McGowan (last seen in "Suicide Squad"), Jean Pearson, Dagmar Blahova, Henrik Jandorf, Niels Anders Thorn, Jesper Asholt, Andrea Veresova, Winter Ave Zoli (last seen in "Father Stu"), Jennifer Roberts Smith, Zdenek Maryska, Garth Hewitt, Dana Reznik (last seen in "How to Deal"), Amy Stewart, Richard Lee, Robert Russel, Go Go Jean Michel Francis, Michael McLachlan, Patricia Netzer, Andrea Miltner (last seen in "Nosferatu"), Jennifer Vey (last seen in "Get Over It").
RATING: 5 out of 10 different types of turkey in the cold cut section (regular, honey, BBQ, cracked pepper, cajun, hickory-smoked, Salsalito, low-fat, low-sodium and gluten-free)
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