Director : Garry Marshall Starring : Anne Hathaway, Callum Blue, Julie Andrews

Gracious, polite, beautiful, and poised, Anne Hathaway is every bit the princess she is meant to be in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, a G-rated sequel she is far too old to be in. But like most royalty, Hathaway puts on a brave face, faces her duty, and does what must be done – and most importantly, leads us to believe she is sincerely enjoying it. It's not faint praise to say that she only finds a few moments of embarrassment, as it's difficult for anyone over the age of, say, 16, to not feel out of place during a slumber party involving screaming 12 year-old girls or pretend that your attraction to the cutesy boy (or in this case, duke) next door holds only the faintest whiff of physical attraction. At 21 – an age when we'd think she might be enjoying a bawdy college romp and experimenting with her newfound freedom in a number of different ways – Hathaway's dutiful appearance as chaste Mia Thermopolis, role model extraordinaire, is filled with dignity and kindness. Let's hope it's the last time she has to do it.

A movie that reveled in being hopelessly square and irony-free, The Princess Diaries was a makeover comedy that benefited from two extraordinary leading ladies – Hathaway and the regal Julie Andrews as her queenly grandmother – and a light touch from director Garry Marshall. With its Pretty Woman-like trajectory – Could Mia go from frumpy teen to beauty queen? Of course she could! – it hit all the right bases and provided a comforting, vaguely fuzzy notion of what being a princess was like. Now that she's, like, a real princess and a babe to boot, Mia in The Princess Diaries 2 is a confident and friendly enough gal, but not someone you have your heart and soul invested in. Whereas in the original Mia had to overcome her own insecurities (not to mention a bitchy Mandy Moore as the reigning Heather of her high school), this new, princess-ified Mia already looks as if she has the world wrapped around her finger. That is, she has most everyone charmed except the patriarchal parliament of Genovia, which has decreed that Mia must be married within a month or forfeit the throne she's about to inherit. Power-shopping for a hubby, Mia enlists the cute-but-not-too-cute Duke Andrew (Callum Blue) as her fiancé; however, she finds herself lured to the caddish Sir Nicholas (Chris Pine), whose uncle (John Rhys-Davies in full mustache-twirling mode) is eyeing the throne for his easy-on-the-eyes nephew.

The stuff of great romance it's not, and it suffers from that malady of contemporary romantic comedy that won't allow either of the guys Mia's torn between to have any overt faults; it's as if she's choosing between two puppies, except one has spots and one has blue eyes. Even the minimal suspense of the original Princess Diaries is, um, suspended here, since it's never in doubt that Mia will get exactly what she wants the way she wants it, as Hathaway is too poised and too wonderful to ever be denied anything -- could you say no to a young woman who approaches Audrey Hepburn-like status? Unfortunately, as fantastic as she is, Hathaway is undone by all the royalty details of the screenplay, most of which read like someone fast-forwarded through Shrek 2 and didn't get all the Hollywood references. While the original film only vaguely hinted at what it meant to be a princess (sit up straight and don't eat corndogs) and grounded its fairy tale in its real-life San Francisco locations, Royal Engagement gives us a very candy-coated (and thus, very Disney-like) vision of royalty which looks, like Genovia itself, too boring by half. (And apparently, real locations weren't good enough – this movie appears to have been filmed in the French-German-Austrian section of Disney World.) Who knew being a princess could be so, well, blah?

Fortunately, to liven things up alongside Hathaway are a handful of original Princess Diaries actors, including indie princess Heather Matarazzo, whose baleful indictments of all that's sweet and pink are a welcome tonic to the Disney-fication of it all. As usual, Marshall pinch hitter Hector Elizondo is nothing less than pitch-perfect as the head of security who carries a torch for the queenly Andrews. And Andrews herself, despite a voice that dips occasionally into a gravelly growl (she'd make a fantastic Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf), is in lovely form, whether she's dealing with juvenile jokes dispensed by various ladies' maids or being forced to share the screen with unworthy Disney starlets. Andrews' much ballyhooed return to screen singing after her vocal chord surgery is sweet and surprisingly touching and low key – that is, until she's forced to duet with Beyonce-in-training Raven, whose overprocessed voice is a startling contrast, not for the better, to Andrews' simple sing-talking. Even if she's not in peak form, Andrews proves that she will always have what it takes to knock these young wannabes off the screen. If that's not the definition of a true queen, I don't know what is.