Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Routinely exploited by her wicked stepmother, the downtrodden Samantha Montgomery is excited about the prospect of meeting her Internet beau at the school's Halloween dance.
A Cinderella Story is a fairly lightweight teen romantic comedy that modernizes the classic fairy tale with internet chatting and Halloween dances. The plot hits every expected beat with little surprise, and the acting is serviceable but unremarkable, with Hilary Duff charming but thin and Chad Michael Murray playing a bland prince. Cinematography is functional TV-movie level work with no distinctive visual identity. Novelty gets a slight bump for its early-2000s internet-romance spin on the Cinderella template, which gave it a culturally specific flavor that felt reasonably fresh at the time, even if it's formulaic by fairy-tale standards. The ending is predictable and rushed, delivering exactly what the genre promises without any earned emotional weight.