“At college Paige meets Eddie, a fellow student from Denmark, whom she first dislikes but later accepts, likes, and loves; he proves to be Crown Prince Edvard. Paige follows him to Copenhagen, and he follows her back to school with a plan.”
– Anonymous, IMDB.
The Prince & Me is a 2004 film directed by Martha Coolidge, starring Julia Stiles and Luke Mably. Martha Coolidge’s filmography ranges from feature films such as Real Genius starring Val Kilmer, and Valley Girl starring Nicholas Cage. She also served as President of the Director’s Guild of America. As the Torontoist put it, ‘There are several discomforting facts about The Prince and Me. The first is that it was somehow the film that lured Martha Coolidge back to the director’s chair.” Julia Stiles is best known for her roles in the films 10 Things I Hate About You and Save the Last Dance. Luke Mably, the titular Prince has appeared in 28 Days Later, East Enders, and Who gets the Dog?
While the Prince & Me takes place in Wisconsin and Denmark, primarily film location was in Toronto, with many University campus’ making cameos throughout the film. A fun fact about the film: During a break from rehearsals in Toronto, Luke Mabley went on while in character to the Four Seasons and convinced everyone that he was the actual Prince of Denmark. He allegedly had six waiters gathered around him, serving him tea and cake and bowing.
Some thoughts from me (Potential spoilers below)…
This film is pretty delightfully cheesy, with a fair share of laugh-out-loud moments. The exact scene that made me decide to go ahead and purchase this one was when the Prince decides to go to America because he sees a Girls Gone Wild style commercial advertising how easy the girls in Wisconsin are. To be fair, we’re shown later that there’s more to his character than him just being a horn dog, but it’s still hilarious to see a grown man literally pound his fists excitedly over a Girls Gone Wild commercial and think “This is our romantic lead”.
As to be expected, our romantic leads do the usual butting of heads when they first meet, to the point where you question how exactly the film is going to make us believe they’ve fallen in love. Hilariously, they first start to bond over making a turkey sandwich. After said sandwich has been prepared, they do get a long quite a bit better, so the rest of their romance does feel a lot more natural. I will fully admit, by the end of the film I was genuinely rooting for the two of them.
This film isn’t 100% hilariously terrible, though it does have its moments that makes me laugh pretty hard. I actually find it gets pretty charming once you get past the initial animosity between two leads (The ending felt like it went on way too long though). I mostly have this one in the roster because it spawned not one, not two, but three sequels, and I love a Bad Princess Movie that exists in a series. I’m looking forward to checking out the other films and being able to compare them to the original. I’m hoping that there’s a distinct decline in quality with each sequel (with the hope that that decline comes with an increase in hilarity).
(FYI, I went to bed immediately after watching The Prince & Me and had a dream where a man broke into my house and shot me dead, followed by another dream where a different man broke into my Grandma’s house and also shot me dead. So what I’m saying is please report back to me if you also end up with dreams where you get shot/die multiple times after watching this movie).
Bad Princess Movies 
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