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Chasing Originality
Mandy Moore may be the most talented actress of the post-teen pop set, but that can't save a generic film.

Starring: Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, Jeremy Piven, Mark Harmon, Annabella Sciorra
Directors: Andy Cadiff

Reviewed by Kevin Cunningham

THE PITCH: The President's teenage daughter wants freedom, so she runs away while on a trip to Europe. However, her father has cleverly planted a Secret Service agent as her 'random' traveling partner. Teen love and heartbreak ensues. IN OTHER WORDS: Escape from L.A. meets The Lizzie Mcguire Movie.

It's almost gotten impossible to call Mandy Moore a pop star anymore. It certainly seems her 'career' as a singer has taken a back seat to a movie career; she's more often on a press junket than an arena tour. And it's a good thing, because she's a very talented and charismatic young actress, and unlike a lot of the girls her age in showbiz today who are talented comedians, when she does the serious scenes, they don't feel forced.

Unfortunately, her film career so far has been mostly the equivalent of a pop star's music career: a couple of hidden gems showing potential masked by a series of movies aimed at, and with little interest for anyone who's not, teenage girls. Chasing Liberty is by far the most boring and least exciting of these.

The premise isn't bad. In fact, it's a great twist on whole 'Princess' stereotype. Moore plays the President's daughter Anna, a teenage girl with the least amount of freedom in the world, and a father's dream of having a cadre of people to always watch over and protect her. The possibilities for comedy and poignancy abound, and, predictably, Anna runs away with a random stranger in Europe. The 'random' stranger is not, of course. He's a Secret Service man, played by newcomer Matthew Goode, placed by the President to give Anna some 'controlled freedom.'

It's at this moment that this story with such potential, even for a teenage romance, goes awry. First off, the twist is no twist for anyone who saw the trailer. It was given away for free, and suitably enough, takes away the first degree of spontaneity that this film could have had. Secondly, that's the point at which the film utterly abandons the storyline, of this being the President's daughter. Outside of a subplot involving a couple of bumbling agents trying to keep up, that key twist to this film becomes unimportant. There is so much potential in the two of them hiding their identities from each other, but the script simply ignores it. Also absent is any machinations by a father who, played by Mark Harmon, has such potential for troublesome meddling.

Finally, the film loses the complete randomness that is a roadtrip through Europe. Even the teen sex-romp Eurotrip captures it better. Chasing Liberty suffers from a lack of interesting supporting characters throughout the trip, and completely misses any of the life lessons one learns on such a trip. Instead, the focus is on the romance, which is incidentally, perhaps the least important part of this film. Ironically, people fall in love on such trips by suffering through indignities and pressing through tough times together, and instead this film seems to try to simply force reasons for these two to be together. It isn't helped by Goode's wooden performance which, like the film, is devoid of any depth or subtlety.

A great improvement for this story might have been made by having the two characters travel through America rather than Europe. An important ingredient of any 'Princess' film is exploring the role responsibility versus being one's own person. This film, of course, has none of that. At least a romp through America might have taught some lessons about American girls in general.

Instead, we're left with a film that is incredibly generic. Like last year's Lizzie McGuire Movie, there's nothing in this movie that truly makes it about what it's supposedly about. It's the same, stupid romance you see in every film with a few pointless backup scenes to change it slightly enough to not be guilty of any sort of plagirism.

Rating	Film:(1 1/2 out of 4 stars)
	Extras: (2 out of 4 stars)
	Overall: (1 1/2 out of 4 stars)

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