Ice Princess (or, "Something queer is going on")

When is it appropriate to slow roll a G-rated movie? Should we also subject our readers to a frame-by-frame deconstruction of The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland? (Incidentally, we have seen The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, and we aren't ruling out the possibility.) Are we going to start debating the cinematic merits of the most recent addition to the Barney oeuvre? Has anyone else heard of the Doodlebops? Isn't this stuff just for children anyway?

Okay, maybe Ice Princess (released in 2005) wasn't solely aimed at a demographic born after the 20th century. But it is rated G, for "General Audiences," an MPAA certification which indicates "No nudity, no sex, no drugs, minimal violence, and limited use of language that goes beyond polite conversation." You may be skeptical that any challenging material could develop within these restrictions -- but Ice Princess strives to be greater than your average girly Disney movie. Like its plucky heroine, Ice Princess breaks the mold, tackling matters of queasy human darkness in the guise of a brightly-colored affirmation of making your dreams come true.

Oh, and one more thing: it's really, incredibly GAY. But that comes later.

In Ice Princess, Michelle Trachtenberg plays Casey Carlyle, a teen physics whiz who embarks on a summer project to invent a computer program that uses math to improve figure skating performance. If that sounds stupid on paper, you have no idea how stupid it sounds coming out of Michelle Trachtenberg's mouth. Eventually, Casey realizes that figure skating is her real dream, and ditches her Harvard interview to prance around like some sort of princess on ice (an "ice princess," if you will). Of course, Casey's feminist mother absolutely hates the idea of her daughter following her dream, mainly because it is a stupid dream -- but that doesn't stop mom from showing up just in time to see Casey's big performance and embrace her stupid new dream. Seeing as this tired plot device has been used in hundreds of movies already, it may be the one folly of Ice Princess we cannot singularly blame on Michelle Trachtenberg's acting.

Trachtenberg has been acting for a very long time, since she was six years old. She has 34 acting credits. She has apparently been nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for something called "Truth Or Scare." But despite having been featured on four (!) of our favorite television shows of the past ten years (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Six Feet Under, House, and Gossip Girl), she has never once been a talented for a single day. Much like fellow Slow Roll fave Jessica Biel, Trachtenberg has a knack for leaving anything she stars in just a little more mediocre than she found it.

After all, Ice Princess is certainly a terrible movie, but it's not the fault of Joan Cusack and Kim Cattrall, who bravely look terrible portraying unpleasant characters like they were expecting Oscar nominations the following January. The film even breaks out the shaky-cam to bring extra intensity to a scene we like to call "Ice Princess: Frump Wars." Cattrall plays Tina Harwood, a disgraced former skater-turned-coach whose name is unimagintively similar to "Tonya Harding" (for reasons that become obvious). Meanwhile, Cusack has rarely been so pinched and unlikable, and we liked her in School Of Rock.

And then there's the gay thing.

Let's just say there is no way we're making this up. At first glance Ice Princess seems tame enough, but once you start paying attention, it is impossible to discount the possibility that this G-rated fable takes place in an alternate society dominated by lesbians. There are almost no male characters in the film. Sure, Casey is granted a disposable male love interest, but the real spark is between Casey and popular girl Gen Harwood (Tina's daughter, played by Hayden Panettiere) -- and that's before Casey's brainy best friend is added to the mix, and things get REALLY Sapphic.

It is hard to say whether this unexpected edginess actually redeems Ice Princess, or simply distracts from the poor writing, misguided premise (the tagline is "From Scholastic... To Fantastic!"), and Michelle Trachtenberg's stuttering. On second thought, the entire cast of The L Word couldn't distract us from Michelle Trachtenberg's stuttering -- for she may not be the only bad thing about Ice Princess, but she is certainly the worst. And for that, we rank this one among our all-time favorite slow rolls.

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