A Cinderella Story: The Movies

As you can see, there is no shortage of modern, teen movies based on Cinderella. In this post, I’m going to discuss the stories in the collection shown above. If teen flicks aren’t your thing, you won’t like these; but some within that genre are better than others. Most of these held their own, but more on that later.

The first, A Cinderella Story with Hilary Duff, gets points for originality as the debut of the set.

I watched this film more than a few times back when it was the first and only of the four. It’s also the only one that isn’t a musical. Main character Sam has the traditional stepsisters, there’s a dance and a missing cell phone. This movie has a lot of appeal for Cinderella fans!

Even so, the next, Another Cinderella Story with Selena Gomez, became my favorite of the collection.

In Another Cinderella Story, our Cinderella heroine Mary is a dancer and our prince has leveled-up from high school popular to pop star.

 

A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song actually has many similarities to the previous one, but with a fun Bollywood-vibe. Both movies have the heroines sing and dance, but this time Katie has just one stepsister and it’s a case of switching voices.

The producers should have stopped at three of these movies. The latest, A Cinderella Story: If the Shoe Fits, is so-named because it’s the only version where our star loses a shoe. (Not to be confused with the 1990 movie If the Shoe Fits with Jennifer Grey).

This was my least favorite, containing such oddities as a dead, stuffed dog and a penguin costume. Its one bright feature was the mise en abyme (literally “placed into abyss” in a recursive sense) of a Cinderella musical put on by the characters in the movie.

Does anyone else feel that A Cinderella Story: If the Shoe Fits is missing the charm of the first three? Those modern Cinderella movies are cute, often musical, updates to the well-loved tale. I enjoyed watching them as scenarios for imagining Cinderella-meets-high-school.

 

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