Finley Tremaine, a small-town farm girl, longs to spread her wings and soar as an aspiring performer. When a Hollywood film crew arrives in her sleepy town, she is determined to land a role in the production and capture the attention of handsome lead actor Jackson Stone.
The storyline is predictable: cute, exuberant girl plus sweet, handsome guy equals instant fireworks of the heart. However, since this is the latest in the string of “Cinderella” stories put to film, there must be mixups, small disasters, close calls, and the required happy ending.
“A Cinderella Story: Starstruck” is fun. The music is peppy, the dancing is rousing, the characters are charming and wholesome as apple pie. Well, that is our “Cinderella” (Finley Tremaine) and our “Prince” (Jackson Stone) are charming and wholesome and Bailee Madison and Michael Evans Behling are perfect in those roles. Add in some drama, disguises that threaten to go wrong, and the requisite evil stepmother and step-siblings and there’s your plot.
Madison is cute as a button as Finley, though her costumes overall are a bit seductive for a down-home country girl. Jack Harmon is mean and sharp as a knife-edge as Kale, our heroine’s evil stepbrother. A couple of awkward scenes are apparently thrown in for some gratuitous “gay” jokes, but overall, the film is going to require a considerable stretch of your imagination to accept all that it throws at you. But hey, it’s a film aimed primarily at the eight to thirteen-year-old age group and as we all know, their imagination is very fluid. The film’s overall theme (“be true to yourself”) is certainly an appropriate one to aim at that audience as are the secondary themes of “be kind and appreciate what you have,” and “value happiness over wealth and fame.” Who is going to argue those points? Throw in some pretty impressive rope tricks and you’ve got yourself a winner! Oh, and did I mention the pig?
Now available on Digital HD and DVD
