By: Ava Rogha
A Cinderella Story (2004) is a modernized version of one of our favorite fairy tales!
It follows high school student Samantha Montgomery (Hilary Duff), who is living in a mansion alongside her two cruel stepsisters Brianna (Madeline Zima) and Gabriella (Andrea Avery), and her evil stepmother Fiona (Jennifer Coolidge).
After her father's death, Samantha “Sam” has started working part-time at her stepmother’s diner, alongside continuously studying hard to obtain the best grades so that she can earn a scholarship to Princeton University.
Sam is known as the diner-girl amongst the kids at school and the only person who spends time with her is her best friend, Carter (Dan Byrd).
She also gets along with her co-workers, Rhonda (Regina King), Eleanor (Mary Pat Gleason) and Bobby (Paul Rodriguez jr.).
Her life might sound a bit miserable as she’s not treated well at home nor at school.
There is one person that keeps her exceptionally happy though, and that is an anonymous boy she met online. He goes by the name “Nomad” and he seems to be her literal soulmate with the exact same ambitions in mind, including Princeton.
The only thing that bothers this modern-day Cinderella is the fact that she does not have a clue what her Prince Charming looks like.
"Because waiting for you is waiting for rain in this drought. Useless and disappointing."
Sam’s Prince Charming is the captain of the baseball team, Austin (Chad Michael Murray) from school!
He’s probably the most liked boy and he is currently dating the most popular brat, Shelby (Julie Gonzalo). He is not a bad guy himself, but hangs out with the toxic clique who often refer to Sam as the diner-girl.
The two lovebirds are dying to meet each other and are aiming to finally make that happen at their Halloween school dance. However, that plan gets sabotaged by Sam’s wicked stepmother Fiona and the girl spends the day she was looking forward to the most cleaning Fiona’s diner and serving food…until she finds a way to sneak out…
Austin: "How could I have seen you before and not know who you are now?"
Sam: "Maybe you were looking, but you weren't really seeing."
When she finally does meet Prince Charming, she is surprised to see that he is far from who she expected…The captain of the baseball team was talking to her all along and she had no idea! However, due to her costume, Austin is struggling to recognize her, but enjoys spending time with the girl regardless of that.
Their complicated romance just gets more complicated from here on, considering Sam is fully aware of her prince, but Austin has no idea who she is.
The girl is dying to reveal herself to him though, but it’s not an easy task…
"Do you ever feel like if you show someone who you really are, they won't accept you?"
I don’t want to spoil the ending of this beautiful love story, but I want to point out that movies like this one give young girls false hope of what online dating is like. In Sam’s case, she’s lucky enough to find her Prince Charming through online dating, despite their major class differences. But how often does that happen in real life?
Most of us may have heard of dating apps nowadays, whether it being Hinge or Tinder. And those are fine, to a certain extent, considering you are ought to know who you're speaking to with a picture provided.
But if you look at online dating through websites like Omegle, where people are anonymous, we really have no clue who we are speaking to, just like Sam! And most often than not, a lot of people turn out to be imposters on those websites!
"I live in a world full of people pretending to be something they're not. But when I talk to you I'm the guy I wanna be."
Online dating nowadays is not all peaches and cream. People will fall in love online and once they are ready to meet their significant other, they might not see who they expected to meet...
Although a lot has changed in our society since this movie was released, it’s important to be wary of who we are speaking to online because the internet is not exactly known to be the safest place to find love!
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