And although they desperately strive to be modern, these new Cinderella stories do so little to improve on the old ones: Many people now in their 30s and 40s grew up watching Charles S. Dubin's "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella," starring the quiveringly fragile Lesley Ann Warren, on television -- its yearly broadcast was, at one time, something of a special event. Somehow I doubt that that 1965 "Cinderella," retrograde and old-fashioned as it seems now, fostered damagingly unrealistic dreams in young children. And the charming, smartly cast 1997 made-for-TV version of the same material, with the serene and appealing Brandy in the title role, suggested that you don't have to stretch the Cinderella myth too far to turn it into a story about empowerment. This "Cinderella" features the horrific Whitney Houston in the role of Fairy Godmother (her abuse of melisma is a disease for which their seems to be no cure), but she does give the cinder girl one solid bit of advice: When Cinderella tells her that she's been waiting for someone to rescue her from her dismal life, Fairy Godmother tells her sternly that she must save herself. Admittedly, FG does provide the carriage, the slippers and dress. But it's Cinderella's innate kindness, intelligence and strength of character that ultimately get her out of her cinder ghetto.

The best and most subversively progressive recent retelling of "Cinderella" is Andy Tennant's 1998 "Ever After," starring Drew Barrymore and Dougray Scott. Barrymore's character is an autodidact: Her father's last gift to her before he died was a copy of Thomas More's "Utopia," which she cherishes. At one point, her nasty stepmother (played with near-glacial coolness by Anjelica Huston) snaps at her, "Reading is for people who can't think for themselves" -- a put-down that's effective because in some ways, it flirts dangerously with being true.

But it's not true for Barrymore's character, nor for her prince, played by Scott: They meet by chance -- he assumes she's of noble birth -- and commence to have lively conversations about things they've read, about ideas they've thought long and hard about. This "Cinderella" (her name is actually Danielle) is, as the prince discovers, "his match in every way," which suggests not so much that he fits her notion of a dream man, as that they suit each other in a way that defines the ultimate in spiritual and intellectual companionship.

In that respect, "Ever After" is possibly the most romantic retelling of the Cinderella myth ever, because the specific kind of happiness it speaks of is so hard to find in real life. There's love at first sight in "Ever After," but it's the prickly kind that you find in romantic comedies, as opposed to the dreamy sort so prevalent in fairy tales. "Ever After" is a story about feminine strength as it's found in women and men. And it preserves what's fun and elementally thrilling -- not to mention powerful -- about fairy tales, instead of flattening them into leaden, virtuous crepes. The new breed of princess movies may pretend to be enlightening, but they're filled with empty entertainment calories: The assumption behind them is that a spoonful of medicine will help the sugar go down. But "Ever After," like the most meaningful myths, speaks in gestures, not slogans. It's the kind of movie that builds character when we're not looking -- which is perhaps the only way.

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