A mostly charmless affair.

The supporting cast's comic abilities smooth over many -- if not all -- of the movie's flaws.

Deeply, proudly average..."Mean Girls" it's not; a plastic butter knife has more edge. But sometimes it's nice to know your kids won't cut their fingers.

It's not a terrible movie, just a disappointingly pleasant one.

When not unnecessarily bland, synthetic, and indistinguishable from undistinguished teen TV, A Cinderella Story is unnecessarily coarse and dumbed down, with every character except Sam and Austin subject to perfunctory ridicule.

The film lacks the guiltily pleasurable panache (and punch) of other recent chickadee flicks posited as protofeminist fairy tales.

Under the charmless direction of Mark Rosman, the actors seem to be frozen at the rehearsal stage, with the blessed exception of a sublimely funny Jennifer Coolidge as the Botoxed horror of a stepmother.

Unfortunately, "Cinderella" feels like a pro forma TV movie from the get-go and relies almost entirely on Duff's likability to hold the audience's attention.

This is simple, lazy storytelling rendered merely functional by appealing leads and the eternal lure of romantic fantasy.

The story is without an original thought, the characters little more than caricatures (unappealing ones, at that) and the filmmaking so uninspired that it's hard to imagine anyone embracing it with anything more than a shrug and a wonder why they didn't wait to catch it on TV.

The only intriguing character is the manager of the diner (and de facto fairy godmother), played by Regina King.

Of all the teen performers out there, Duff has to be the blandest (especially since the Olsens hit the skids).

Not as vile as "Sleepover," nor as tangy as "Mean Girls."

Desperately conceived by even the most insipid standards of contemporary teen-queen cinema, A Cinderella Story operates under a rotting pumpkin of a supposition.