Ella has been given the gift of obedience by a more-than-usually-clueless fairy and must do whatever anyone tells her to do...but all ends well.

This was a really, really charming book.

Good characters, an interesting plot, lots of humor, an almost insurmountable problem...a really nice book.

And well written.

Unfortunately, the idiots who made this movie threw out everything that made the story charming and added a lot of modern day references and silly gross jokes because they think that's what teenagers want.

And sure. Some teenagers probably thought it was funny. But if anyone actually made a movie as good as the book, even more teenagers would have liked it. And their parents. And grownups without kids. Sounds like a no brainer to me, but on the other hand, who lets me make movies?

So they rewrote the plot, changed a whole bunch of characters, added others like the Prince's evil uncle (Cary Elwes, just putting in his time), put in a whole lot of pop culture references (like a medieval style mall and high school) and bunches of gross jokes.

Anne Hathaway is just amazingly pretty and charming, like Julia Roberts' light side come to life. She's perfect for Ella, except of course for the stupid stuff they made her do in this movie.

The rest of the actors were fine, as far as they went, but they were totally upstaged by the adorable animated talking snake, nuf sed.

Reality Police: the book and the movie had the same problem: all Ella needed was for someone to order her never to obey another order unless she wanted to. Problem solved. But the book is still way charming, definitely read it. And give this stupid movie a miss, it's not worth your time.