Princess Protection Program

It’s not surprising to note that Princess Protection Program is ultimately as silly and relentlessly lightweight as its myriad of made-for-The-Disney-Channel brethren, with the film’s unapologetically dumbed-down sensibilities undoubtedly ensuring that younger fans of stars Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato will walk away satisfied. The movie follows Lovato’s Princess Rosalinda as she’s whisked into hiding after her safety is threatened by a ruthless dictator (Johnny Ray’s Magnus Kane), with her participation in the title program ultimately landing her in rural Louisiana – where she adopts the name Rosie, moves in with Gomez’s Carter Mason, and attempts to blend into the scenery at a local high school. It’s a high-concept premise that’s employed to relentlessly innocuous effect by Annie DeYoung, as the screenwriter effectively squanders the inherent possibilities of the fish-out-of-water setup and instead places a consistent emphasis on eye-rolling melodramatic encounters and interludes (eg Rosie is humiliated in the cafeteria by a bitchy fellow student, Carter pines for a popular boy at school, etc). The pervasively conventional atmosphere (eg a trying-on-clothes montage!) slowly but surely renders the movie’s few positive elements moot, with the almost uniformly charming performances and Allison Liddi’s sporadically (and surprisingly) cinematic directorial choices the most obvious victims of DeYoung’s hopelessly bland modus operandi. And while Princess Protection Program admittedly does fare slightly better than some of The Disney Channel’s other endeavors (ie it’s not completely boring, which is just about the best one can hope for), the aggressive manner with which the film has been geared towards children ensures that older viewers will find little worth embracing here.

** out of ****