Ice Princess (goes splat)

Oops, I gave it all away in the headline.

Joan Cusack and Kim Cattrall are fun to watch. And I like to watch ice skating. Those are my excuses for renting this film in the first place. I knew that it was a long shot.

Cusack and Cattrall didn't disappoint. Cusack is a wonderful actress, and despite a role that was written to be cartoonish, she invests the mother role with all the aches of wanting the best for a kid whose gifts are different from yours. Cattrall allowed herself to be shot in the most unflattering light and makeup imaginable, portraying an ice princess who has hardened into an ice queen: a stage mother with steel edges. Fun, nasty, surprising: she must have had fun with this one.

But that's it, folks. The rest of it is a soupy WB-ish tale about a nerd (best-dressed and best-coiffed nerd I ever saw) who becomes an ice champion courtesy of a science project. The message seems to be that it's ok to be a physics whiz, but much, much better to wear more eye makeup and use those physics for sports!

Splat.