Chasing Liberty

Mandy Moore in a movie about the President’s daughter going on a crazy trans-european fun spree? Pinch me, I must be dreaming! Surprisingly, this movie is entirely bearable and even reasonably enjoyable. Moore is deliriously cute and chubby, and her pouty face carries a lot of weight in this lightweight romp. She’s helped by the reputedly cute-enough-to-induce-spontaneous-hor mone-overdose (or CETISHO, as the medical doctors say) Matthew Goode, who plays a part culled from about a zillion teen movies. See, he and Moore fall in love, but actually, he’s being paid to be with her, but she doesn’t know that, but then he really falls in love with her, but then she finds out, and then the ghosts of Patrick Dempsey and Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy and John Hughes rise from the grave and swirl about in a mad dance of desire and deceit. And then Mandy Moore goes to the Berlin Love Parade and lots of Secret Service agents fall in love, and then everyone is happy and Mark Harmon plays a president who doesn’t get bjs in the oval office or lie about weapons of mass destruction. The end. (Warning: this film contains a shot of Mandy Moore’s naked, pudgy ass. You have been warned.)