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Chasing Liberty

2003, Movie, PG-13, 100 mins

Chasing Liberty: Review

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Stifled by her overprotective entourage, the famous daughter of a high-ranking government official ditches her watchers and goes sight-seeing, meeting a handsome man with an ulterior motive in the process. Sound familiar? It would if you'd seen ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953), but if you've seen ROMAN HOLIDAY you're not the target audience for this slight, light romp, which tells a similar tale without crediting its predecessor. Replacing runaway princess Audrey Hepburn with 18-year-old Anna Foster (pop singer-turned-actress Mandy Moore), rebellious daughter of the president of the United States, it starts with the first family taking a trip to the Czech Republic. Anna (code name "Liberty") is frustrated that she can't so much as go on a date without the supervision of a gaggle of secret service bodyguards along. She begs her father (Mark Harmon) to let her spend an evening alone with pal Gabrielle (Beatrice Rosen), a French ambassador's daughter; he reluctantly agrees to let her go dancing with only agents Weiss (Jeremy Piven) and Morales (Annabella Sciorra) on the job. But after glimpsing Anna's sexy new look, the president reneges and sends a platoon worth of secret service chaperons; she retaliates by sneaking out of the club and enlisting the aid of handsome stranger Ben Calder (Matthew Goode) to make good her escape. Anna plans to meet Gabrielle and go to Berlin for the Love Parade, but after some innocent adventures in Prague — including a skinny-dip in the Danube — she misses their rendezvous and decides to go Berlin anyway. Ben tags along and Anna tries to keep her identity under wraps, not realizing that Ben is concealing his own secret — he's really a secret service agent assigned to keep watch over her. TV director Andy Cadiff and screenwriters David Schneiderman and Derek Guiley appear to kept the teen romantic-comedy checklist close to hand at all times: Anna tries on every article of clothing she owns before a date, dances around her bedroom in her scanties and is featured in multiple montages whose heavy-handed scoring ensures that no one will miss the important emotional beats. Moore slips comfortably into her sweet-goofy role and Goode does his best to be brooding and attractive, but their combined efforts fail to strike romantic sparks. The bizarrely entertaining relationship that blossoms between Sciorra and Piven is far more amusing and convincing, which only underscores the lack of chemistry between the dewy leads. leave a comment --Angel Cohn
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