Chasing Liberty
(2004)
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Pop songstress Mandy Moore (A WALK TO REMEMBER) makes another big-screen splash with CHASING LIBERTY, a charming romantic comedy. Moore is Anna Foster (aka Liberty), daughter of the President of the United States, James Foster (Mark Harmon). Fed up with the overprotective secret service men that follow her around every second, Anna finally decides to cut loose. While on vacation in Europe she goes to a live performance of the hip-hop band The Roots and then escapes on a motorcycle with a cute photographer, Ben Calder (Matthew Goode). But what she doesn't realize is that Ben is actually a secret service agent himself who is under strict orders to act like a regular guy in order to provide the illusion that Anna is on her own for the first time in her life. As the pair journeys from Prague to Venice to the Love Parade festival in Berlin, Anna finds herself falling in love with Ben. At the same time, the agents on her trail (Jeremy Piven and Annabella Sciorra) find the same thing happening to them. Though the well-intentioned Ben does his best to keep Anna at a polite distance without crossing any romantic lines, it eventually becomes clear that he too is falling for her, complicating the situation. With CHASING LIBERTY, Moore once again proves her undeniably charismatic screen presence. |
When the daughter of the US president and a Secret Service agent flee from protocol across Europe, you keep hoping for a bit of action to liven things up in what is essentially a tedious travelogue. In this dim echo of William Wyler's Roman Holiday, Mandy Moore stars as the White House “princess”, fed up by being hemmed in for security reasons. She makes a dash for it and ends up on the back of a Vespa driven by Matthew Goode, who's really a Secret Service agent assigned to protect her. She wants to make it to Berlin's Love Parade, a kind of Teutonic Mardi Gras but, first of all, they hit Prague and Florence. While director Andy Cardiff seeks out all the postcard touristy bits, there's only weak chemistry between the hero and heroine.