The Queen Steals the Spotlight in The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement

Julie Andrews, star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, two of my all-time favorite movies, was probably the main draw for me when The Princess Diaries came out. I saw it and loved it even more than I’d expected. With most of the original cast – including Andrews and the elegant Hector Elizondo – and director Garry Marshall returning for The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement, I hoped it might be a cut above the average sequel. I’d say it lived up to my expectations beautifully.

The movie begins with Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway), a recent college graduate, heading off to her kingdom of Genovia for some intensive training in the art of behaving like a queen. She doesn’t have that duty yet; Queen Clarisse Renaldi (Andrews) is still on the throne, and she intends to remain there until she feels that Mia is ready for the job.

The only trouble is that a nefarious relative, Viscount Mabrey (John Rhys-Davies), has designs on the throne, in a roundabout way. He wants his nephew, Nicholas (Chris Pine), to take over, presumably to be his puppet, and it’s actually within the realm of possibility since an odious old law states that Mia is unfit to rule unless she marries – never mind that the widowed Queen Clarisse has been doing the job perfectly well for years. If Mia doesn’t come up with a husband in the next month, she may be looking at a drastically different future than the one for which she had been preparing. When she finds a suitable match in the form of English golden boy Andrew Jacoby (Callum Blue), a pleasant young man for whom she feels nothing, she must decide which is more important to her: the crown or a shot at genuine love.

Mia’s kiss with Michael, the shy brother of her best friend Lilly (Heather Matarazzo), in the first movie is one of my favorite movie kisses, and I loved the sweetness of their relationship and the fantastic line “You saw me when I was invisible,” so I was a little sad that he was out of the picture this time around. The love story in this film is more prominent, but though it is certainly engaging, I’m not sure I was quite as touched this time around. Not by Mia’s story anyway; her grandmother steals her thunder with the terribly romantic continuation of her clandestine courtship with her trusted advisor, Joe (Elizondo). Theirs is a tender relationship developed over years of close contact, made apparent through Andrews and Elizondo’s wonderful chemistry; like LOST’s Rose and Bernard, they love with a depth of tenderness few younger couples can match. The grace and humor both actors bring to their characters make these veterans my favorite cast members, followed closely by the delightfully diabolical Rhys-Davies.

As much as I enjoyed the movie as a whole, I derived the greatest pleasure from individual moments such as the scene in which Mia stops a parade in order to show kindness to a harassed little girl, reminding me of the famous picture of Princess Diana stooping to comfort a crying child just before her wedding, and the fantastically fun spectacle of the stodgy queen surfing down a slide on a mattress. In one of the most notable moments, Andrews sings, the first musical performance for the legendary songbird in nearly a decade following her throat surgery.

Hathaway continues to charm in this thoroughly enjoyable sequel, but it’s Andrews who truly sparkles, having lost none of her magic in the transition from enchanted umbrella to royal scepter. Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement is a joy for all ages, but perhaps most of all for those who could use a reminder that it is never too late to find new life in love.