Princess Protection Programme (2009)

This is definitely one of those cheesy chickflicky, very overdramatic films. A TV Disney Channel film, so what do you expect? A film with the likes of ‘Camp Rock’, ‘The Cheetah Girls’, ‘Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure’, ‘Lizzie McGuire The Movie’ – some of those cheesy but great movies, however some just aren’t great and they’re a bit too cheesy to say the least… Saying this, I think ‘Princess Protection Programme’ fits into the former category. I do love it.

A film revolving Selena Gomez as “bait girl”, the sixteen year old girl who is disregarded in school, the girl who believes to be in love with someone who can’t even have the decency to remember her name, this being Donny (Robert Adamson); the girl who doesn’t realise that her best friend, Ed (Nicholas Braun), worships her. But the girl who has the most adorable and best relationship with her father, her “pal” (Tom Verica). Selena Gomez plays Carter, who plans to get out of school and actually make a difference with her life. Her father, Major Mason, does that. Now this is where the film is quite different to a lot of others, his job is to protect Royal Princesses, stay with me, I said it was a bit cheesy. So when Princess Rosalinda of Costa Luna, is under threat and her country is held captive by General Kane (Johnny Ray Rodriguez), she is put into the Princess Protection Programme. Her relocation happens to be in Louisiana, no other than Carter’s home. Princess Rosalinda, now normal teen Rosie as Carter’s cousin. The person who plays this Princess is Demi Lovato. Now I’m not going to lie to you, I love Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato as actresses, having grown up with Alex from ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’ and Sonny in ‘Sonny with a Chance’; plus Demi Lovato’s albums are some of my favourites ever. So I guess, for this film, it helps if you like the actresses.

The two girls are from completely different backgrounds, Rosie has crashed into Carter’s life and everything changes. Rosie struggles to try and fit in, Carter struggles to keep the way things were. They both struggle to relate to each other’s differences. Rosie having everything done for her, Carter doing everything herself. The lives in polar opposite worlds. But this film, excuse the cheesiness, is a film of friendship, and they soon become best friends, pretty quickly I have to admit. They both struggle together at school, normal teenager issues at school.

‘Princess Protection Programme’ does jump from Louisiana with Rosie and Carter, and their struggles with boys at school, with the school dance coming up and with the election for homecoming Queen rising quickly, and most significantly, the struggle with the stereotypical popular yet not nice girls of the school. To Costa Luna and the difficulties rising there as Kane is desperate to locate where the Princess has been taken. This break-away from the school troubles is a nice change in this sort of film. Of course, the film echoes the many films of popular teenage problems during school, but also because of the fact that Rosie is actually Princess Rosalinda, it’s a refreshing change to have that essence in the film, rather than just school school school.

As I’ve already said, I love this film. But of course, it is of a required taste. I appreciate those cheesy, easy to watch films, I find they do have comical moments and the morals in the films are strong. This is definitely what ‘Princess Protection Programme’ is, so it’s completely understandable to easily disregard the film, but there are many films alike to this out there. Not only just the ones I’ve previously mentioned, but there is ‘Bratz’, ‘Hannah Montana The Movie’, ‘Monte Carlo’ – just those cheesy childhood movies that have their own appreciation.