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'Ice Princess' strains to be believable, even for Disney

The Barbie and Bratz set will love this tale about a shy teenager who becomes an "Ice Princess." But the tepid script and the direction by Tim Fywell, who has mostly directed British television shows, has a made-for-TV sensibility better suited to the Disney Channel than a Disney feature film.

Walt Disney Pictures 'Ice Princess' C The verdict: If you are a 10-year-old girl, this one's for you. Director: Tim Fywell Starring: Joan Cusack, Kim Cattrall, Michelle Trachtenberg, Hayden Panettiere Run time: 92 minutes Release date: March 18, 2005 Rating: G See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer   -- Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Michelle Trachtenberg ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") stars as Casey Carlyle, a brainy high school junior and physics wiz who keeps her nose in the books and out of the social intrigues of boys, parties and typical teenage antics. Joan Cusack, with her Chicago nasal intonation at full and annoying volume, plays her painfully intense, single mom, who is grooming her daughter for Harvard with a desperation motivated by her own frustrated dreams.

Casey's work on a college scholarship project leads her to the local ice rink where she plans to demonstrate the role of physics in skating. There she encounters Kim Cattrall, trading in her wanton role in "Sex and the City" for an aging ice empress (and also single mom), who coaches little girls with a cold intensity motivated by her frustrated dreams. In fact, the more interesting film might have been titled "Desperate Single Moms on Ice."

Predictably, Casey ends up on the ice herself. She enrolls in a beginner's class, for research purposes, and immediately begins to morph into an ice diva-in-training. Cattrall's coach, who has pushed her own reluctant daughter (Hayden Panettiere) into the skating world, takes notice and enters Casey into competition. But Cattrall soon reveals her claws when Casey threatens to challenge her daughter's chances.

From there, the movie becomes beauty versus brains in the battle of Cattrall versus Cusack for Casey's amazing multi-talents.

There is a lesson here for pushy parents, who are a ubiquitous feature of today's child-obsessed society. But perhaps it isn't the lesson that was intended. Although the film suggests that kids need to follow their own dreams, it nevertheless may encourage the stress and competition that studies now suggest is robbing children of their childhoods.

Casey's daunting list of accomplishments will be intimidating to any grownup, much less the 10-year-old target audience. The filmmakers seem to have realized that they were going too far, and there is a nod to some sort of reality in regard to the final competition.

But, Casey's progress from an amateur, to a promising beginner with natural talent, to a champion skater pushes the outside envelope of credulity — even for a Disney film. In a few short months, she executes triple jumps that take professional skaters a lifetime to master. And, all the while, she diligently crams for her Harvard interview, while managing to let down her hair, literally, by entering the social scene and beginning a tentative romance.

Like another Disney heroine, Mary Poppins, Casey turns out to be "positively perfect in every way." But Mary was a fairy-tale character. "Ice Princess" might have better served the young girls who will love it, and their pushy parents, if Casey had been a little less perfect.