ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

The post-modern fairytale bandwagon rolls on with Ella Enchanted, an inconsistent but game retread of the Cinderella story. Anne Hathaway steals and saves the show, exuberant and dazzling as Ella, the plucky maid on a quest to break a charm, free the giants and maybe rescue and marry her Prince Charming along the way. A willingness to experiment - modern musical numbers, grown-up references, and light brushes of politics - generates just about more blessings than curses, and even a dreadful ending can't quite break Hathaway's spell.

The playfully anachronistic kingdom - its shopping malls with wooden escalators, its teen magazines obsessed with the playboy Prince - is slipping almost unnoticed from an idyll into an unjust dictatorship. Ella, "gifted" with unquestioning obedience by her fairy godmother at birth, wants to speak out against it. But how do you rebel when you must always to do exactly as you are told? Resolving to track down her godmother to break her curse, Ella takes off into a world of talking books, ogres, Queen songs and adventure.

"STRUGGLES AT TIMES TO STAY FRESH"

Premier league panto-menace comes from the snake-behind-the-throne Heston (voiced by Steve Coogan) and Cary Elwes' hammily despicable Edgar, the Prince Regent intent on doing in Prince Charming before he can marry and claim his crown. The finely chiselled Hugh Dancy provides princely eye candy and the odd decent line, Joanna Lumley proves to be a great wicked stepmother and Lucy Punch does a lot with the sneering stepsister Hattie.

Ella Enchanted comes off worst in the obvious comparisons to fairytale classic The Princess Bride and the far sprightlier Shrek. And as the third retelling of the Cinders story this year (after Hilary Duff's A Cinderella Story and Julia Stiles' The Prince & Me), it struggles at times to stay fresh. A couple of musical numbers grate and the ending is badly fumbled, but the constant efforts to please and the sheer star quality of Hathaway grant, for younger viewers at least, an agreeably happy ever after.