A Cinderella Story
Never Let The Fear Of Striking Out Keep You From Playing The Game
On November 8th, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP finally reached an agreement after over 100 days on strike, meaning both the WGA and SAG strikes are officially over. This is exciting for so many reasons, but the main one is that it's proof the power is always in the people, and when we refuse to surrender to those at the top, we will succeed. With the strikes finally over, it is my pleasure to declare, as everyone's been saying on social media, that we are SO back!
I had another movie planned this week from an independent production company because I didn't know that the strikes would end yesterday. While I still want to cover it and am saving all my notes on it for a future newsletter, I thought there was no better way to celebrate the end of the strikes than to finally get back to covering big studio films.
I watched A Cinderella Story a few months ago and was hoping I would be able to cover it soon. While it took a while, I decided to make it the first big studio film post-strikes because of how much it meant to me growing up and how much it still means to me now.
A Cinderella Story was released in 2004 and was a live-action, modern take on the classic fairytale Cinderella. With early 2000s icons like Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray leading the film, A Cinderella Story became a staple of its time. As I mentioned in my newsletter for the 20th anniversary of The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Hilary Duff had a massive impact on my childhood, meaning there wasn't a movie she was in that I didn't go see.
While I don't remember much about going to see the movie in theaters since I was still a kid, I do remember that 2004 was the same year I saw Hilary Duff in concert for the first time. According to Wikipedia, "Anywhere But Here" was the fifth song on the tracklist, but in A Cinderella Story, it is the song that closes out the film right after Austin Ames gives Sam Montgomery her cell phone back, and they drive off in her Mustang.
Rewatching A Cinderella Story reminded me of a recent live-action adaptation debate. One of the biggest controversies in film lately is Rachel Zegler's comments about her updated live-action Snow White, which won't hit theaters until 2025. The 22-year-old actress has a pretty negative perspective on the Disney princess and was thrilled that the new film isn't focused on Snow White being saved by a prince but instead being a warrior herself.
“Fairytales aren’t just about finding handsome princes. They’re about fulfilling your dreams and about standing up for what you believe in”-Hal, A Cinderella Story
A lot of people were upset because they felt there was nothing wrong with Snow White's original story, and the belief that women all have to be fighters and warriors in order to be important is harmful. What I love so much about films like A Cinderella Story is that we get a story that is focused on a female character and her love interest, but she is also given a purpose outside of the love story.
The purpose isn't that she's some kind of warrior like Mulan or the new live-action Snow White, but that she's just a human being learning who she is and learning to stand up for what she believes in. I think this is what a lot of big-time producers miss when they're trying to modernize princesses from old fairytales. In fact, it's the ordinary nature of Hilary Duff's character that makes her so relatable and makes the film feel so timeless almost two decades later.
Sam Montgomery
When it came to casting the film in the early 2000s, there was no actress who could have better embodied Sam than Hilary Duff. Fans already knew her as the awkward, relatable girl next door because of her role in Lizzie McGuire. Hilary Duff effortlessly transitioned into the role of Sam Montgomery, giving girls yet another positive role model to look up to. As someone who couldn't stand most of the people I went to school with growing up, seeing Sam struggle to fit in at school while dealing with classmates with major superiority complexes made me feel a lot less alone.
The scene at the beginning of the film particularly stands out when Shelby Cummings speeds her white Thunderbird convertible into a parking spot, cutting off Sam. This is moments before Austin Ames nearly crashes into her with his black G-Wagon.
However, even as Sam is disrespected by nearly everyone in her life–the kids at school, her stepsisters, and her stepmother–she never loses sight of who she is and never forgets everything she learned from her later father. He always encouraged her to go after her dreams, stand up for what she believes in, and stay true to herself. While this is certainly an updated version of the original Cinderella, these morals aren't much different than the 1950 film.
“You can mess with your hair and your nose and your face, and you can even mess with my dad’s diner, but you’re through messing with me”-Sam, A Cinderella Story
Cinderella was always more focused on who the character was and what she believed in rather than what she did in the world and what she had accomplished. Although Sam heads off to Princeton at the end of the movie, like the Disney film, her purpose is not to accomplish some grandiose dream but to find herself and be that person unapologetically. Sam was a strong character without having to be extraordinary.
Even though Sam is good at being herself, no matter what anyone else thinks, she does face some doubts. She struggles to tell Austin that she's Cinderella because, with everything she learned from her dad, she's still worried Austin won't accept her. They've had such a beautiful relationship through instant messaging, but if Austin were to know who she really was, the fantasy would end, and she'd be forced to face reality, which includes all her fears. Ultimately, she does have to do this, but because she never sacrificed who she was to win over anyone's acceptance, everything works out for her in the end.
Even as the world around her begins to crumble–Fiona gives her a fake rejection letter from Princeton, she's humiliated at the Pep Rally, Austin refuses to stand up for her, and she thinks her entire future is doomed–she finds hope, with help from Rhonda (A Cinderella Story's take on the fairy godmother.) By the end, everything falls into place, and Sam can happily go off to Princeton (after finding her real acceptance letter) and run her father's diner with Rhonda after finding her father's will, which Fiona had hidden.
Sam & Austin's Updated Love Story
Cinderella and Prince Charming's original love story is pretty one-dimensional. They barely know each other, and the story doesn't do a great job of describing who Prince Charming actually is. However, A Cinderella Story gives us a much more in-depth look at the couple. Austin Ames is the football quarterback and the most popular guy at North Valley High.
His father expects him to get a football scholarship to the University of Southern California, but in his heart, he knows he wants to be a writer and go to Princeton University. So begins the close bond between him and Sam, even though neither of them knows who they're talking to. Sam doesn't fit in anywhere, especially not at home, and Austin feels misunderstood by everyone in his life, but they find comfort in relating to each other through instant messaging.
“I live in a world full of people pretending to be something they’re not, but when I talk to you, I’m the guy I want to be”-Austin, A Cinderella Story
When Austin and Sam meet at the dance, he doesn't recognize her because she's wearing a masquerade mask, and he doesn't pay much attention to Sam in school because she isn't popular enough. However, Sam immediately recognizes him, but the best part is that she's unphased. She doesn't care who Austin is at school; she cares about the guy she's been sharing emails with.
While her stepsisters and everyone else in school might've been flattered to know Austin liked them, Sam valued herself too much to be impressed that the school quarterback was the one she'd been instant messaging. In fact, she was so unimpressed that she never let him off the hook for the way he acted when he did find out who she was.
When I watch A Cinderella Story, I'm reminded of something I always disliked in 10 Things I Hate About You. I always felt like Kat forgave Patrick way too easily after what he did to her. In A Cinderella Story, Sam and Austin don't end up together until she stands up to him and lets him know how she feels.
“Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought; useless and disappointing”-Sam, A Cinderella Story
At this point, he's been acting like an idiot, not acknowledging her after she'd been humiliated in front of the whole school and not even defending her after it happened. He acted as if she had done something wrong to him instead of taking responsibility for treating her as if she were invisible and not worthy of his time and attention.
When Sam tells him off in the most empowering moment of the film, it's satisfying, and it lets him know that she's not going to wait around until he decides to make a move. Because Sam is brave enough to tell Austin the truth, he stands up to his father, runs off the field in the middle of the homecoming game, and kisses her in the rain after she so very clearly told him that waiting for him was as useless as waiting for rain in the LA drought.
It was satisfying to see Austin get put in his place and to see Sam brave enough to walk away from someone she really cared about if he wasn't going to treat her right because she knew she was going to be okay on her own.
Why Don't They Make Movies Like This Anymore?
A pretty common social media trend is posting movies from the late 90s and early 2000s online and questioning why Hollywood just doesn't make movies like those anymore. A Cinderella Story is a prime example of one of those films. These days, a lot of teen comedies feel very out of touch because Hollywood's idea of relating to the youth is adding scenes of characters making TikToks and having them communicate solely with internet slang. However, this doesn't feel like the correct approach.
Recently, RL Stine spoke to Rolling Stone about his updated Goosebumps series. He said he feels like despite how much the world has changed and how different kids are these days than they were in the 90s, they haven't changed all that much and are still afraid of the same things. I think Hollywood needs to look at the younger generation from this perspective.
“I really don’t care what people think about me because I believe in myself and I know that things are gonna be okay”-Sam, A Cinderella Story
No matter how much technology advances and how many new apps are out in the world, teenagers will always have the same struggles, like not fitting in at school and struggling to be their true selves out of fear of what others will think of them. With the strikes over, now feels like the perfect time for Hollywood to lean back into authenticity and start telling relatable stories that come from the heart instead of a need to seem cool and relevant. If they did that, maybe we'd have more movies like A Cinderella Story today.
I rewatched A Cinderella Story a few months ago, and I balled my eyes out on the football scene at the end. It surprised me because I never got that emotional when i watched the film when I was younger, maybe because I couldn't appreciate it as a kid (I grew up in the 2000s as an older Gen Z). I really wish they would make films as iconic as they used to — but maybe our culture is just too saturated, too fragmented, to make anything that really stands apart as an anomaly (although it does happen! just not as often anymore).