"The Princess Diaries" is a sweet movie for young people and it has a premise fraught with potential, but that potential goes largely unfulfilled due to a curious timidity by the filmmakers. Determined to cling to a G rating for this Disney film, director Garry Marshall and writer Gina Wendkos refuse to set this modern-day fairy tale in the modern-day world. [...] the Julie Andrews who turns up to play European royalty is not the Julie Andrews with an edge as we know from Blake Edwards movies, but an older version of "practically perfect" adult minder from "Mary Poppins."

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