Verdict: The shoe doesn't fit for this charm-free Cinderella tale.

By CHRISTY LEMIRE
The Associated Press

What Amanda Bynes should have wanted from "What a Girl Wants" is a better script — and she deserves it.

A rising star who had her own variety show on Nickelodeon at 12, and who was easily the best thing in the otherwise unwatchable "Big Fat Liar" with Frankie Muniz, Bynes is cute, funny and infinitely likable. She has the looks and comic timing of a young Jennifer Aniston — another actress for whom it took too long to leap successfully from television to film. What the 17-year-old Bynes got was a sticky-sweet fairy tale strictly for tweens and teens who couldn't get enough of this movie when it came out in 2001 and was called "The Princess Diaries."

"What a Girl Wants" smacks of the sitcommy humor Bynes hopefully will be so done with soon, full of pratfalls and repeated sight gags. This should come as no surprise, though; the director, Dennie Gordon, previously directed episodes of "Ally McBeal" and other TV shows before making her feature debut with 2001's disastrous "Joe Dirt." And Jenny Bicks, one of the screenwriters, has written episodes of "Sex and the City."

Thirty minutes or so of this kind of comedy may work, but in feature film form, it feels forced — and Gordon made the movie even longer than it had to be with several montages of Bynes' character trying on clothes, with insipid girl-power pop playing in the background.

The most interesting thing about the movie took place behind the scenes: Warner Bros. changed the ads, which featured Bynes flashing a peace sign and wearing a tank top adorned with an American flag, to ones in which her hand is resting at her side. Because of the war in Iraq, the studio feared the peace sign would be misinterpreted as a political statement. But there's no way anyone could confuse this movie with one that has something serious to say.

Bynes plays the perky Daphne Reynolds, who grew up in New York City's Chinatown section with her bohemian mother, Libby (Kelly Preston).

At one of the many weddings where Daphne works as a waitress while Libby sings with her rock band (and Preston really does belt out bad covers of Celine Dion songs), Daphne laments that she'll never have the father-daughter dance the bride enjoys because she doesn't know her father.

Dad is Lord Henry Dashwood (Colin Firth), a British politician from an aristocratic family with whom Libby fell in love and informally married in Morocco 17 years ago. But Henry's family gave her the boot because she was an unsuitable Yank, and he never learned he had a daughter. (You see where this is leading, right?)

Daphne impetuously jets off to England, where The Clash's "London Calling" plays as she sees the sights from the top of a double-decker bus, naturally.

(The filmmakers couldn't resist using that great but obvious song, but notably left out Christina Aguilera's "What a Girl Wants" — though its inclusion certainly couldn't have hurt.)

All the requisite cultural clashes ensue. Daphne's cute new boyfriend, a local musician named Ian (Oliver James), has to explain that the "loo" is a thing, not a person.

And when she finally meets her father — along with his controlling fiancee, Glynnis (Anna Chancellor), and her snooty daughter, Clarissa (Reese Witherspoon look-alike Christina Cole) — Daphne is forced to conform to their conservative, traditional ways, which includes changing her wardrobe and stifling her personality.

While the movie's you-go-girl, be-yourself message is exactly what its target audience needs to hear, the problem is, Daphne was by no means socially unacceptable in the first place. She's extremely normal — a vivacious, stylish, inquisitive girl. So breaking her down just to rebuild her in their image, and having her assert herself, is a pretty unfounded premise.

Besides wasting Bynes' talents, "What a Girl Wants" also squanders several veteran actors, including Eileen Atkins as Henry's mother, Jonathan Pryce as his top adviser, and Firth himself, though they manage to allow some deadpan humor to come through.

But lines such as "This Cinderella's got a dad — she's not going anywhere," are likely to be the groaners you remember long after this movie has turned into a pumpkin.