The Kids Are Not Alright

Rewatching Ice Princess in 2026

I rewatched Ice Princess (2005) over the weekend, and I have to say, this movie holds up.

There is something timeless about Ice Princess that I fear doesn't exist in movies made for kids anymore. It has this sincerity to it. It takes its characters seriously. It takes the audience seriously. It doesn't feel like it's winking at the adults in the room every five seconds or desperately trying to convince you that it's cool.

And honestly, after watching Camp Rock 3 a couple of weeks ago, I have reached a conclusion:

The kids are not alright.

My cringe-filled viewing of Camp Rock 3, coupled with this weekend's Ice Princess rewatch, got me thinking about what has happened to movies made for children.

Because when you watch movies like Ice Princess, High School Musical, The Princess Diaries, The Lizzie McGuire Movie—just to name a few absolute bangers—you can tell that everyone involved in making them took the assignment seriously.

Or, at the very least, if they didn't take it seriously, it doesn't come through on screen.

And I think that's important.

We Used to Make Movies for Kids

When I was eight years old in 2005, Ice Princess was made for me.

Not my parents.

Not the adults who were funding it.

Not a bunch of thirty-year-olds who wanted to relive their childhood.

Little girls like me.

Girls whose parents would take them to the movie theater on a Saturday afternoon to watch a movie about a teenage girl who wants to become a figure skater. A movie with complicated relationships between mothers and daughters. A movie about academic pressure, ambition, jealousy, friendship, insecurity, and figuring out who the hell you are.

And it trusted us to care about all of that.

That's the thing I keep coming back to.

I fear that nowadays, no one is really making movies for kids anymore. They're making them for their parents, for the people with the money, for the adults who grew up with the original, for the IP holders, for the shareholders, for the algorithm.

And that's why we get the constant parade of reboots, remakes, prequels, sequels, legacy sequels, spin-offs, and whatever other permutation of an existing property Hollywood can squeeze out of a spreadsheet.

I digress.

But I have to imagine that if I were a kid nowadays, I'd eventually get exhausted by it.

Because imagine having every piece of entertainment marketed to you constantly remind you about something that happened twenty years before you were born.

Films and televesion have become self-referential to a nauseating degree.

We are nostalgia-maxing everything.

We keep beating this dead horse about the past and talking about how great things used to be. We chuckle when a reboot makes a reference to the original and turn to the child sitting next to us like, "Had to be there."

But they weren't there.

They should get to have their movies.

They should get to have the thing they obsess over with their friends at recess. They should get to quote a movie that was made specifically for them. They should get to grow up and look back twenty years later and say, "Oh my God, I fucking loved that movie."

That's what Ice Princess is for me.

Made With Sincerity

Some people say the best movies were written by a woman and directed by a man. I don't necessarily agree with that as some universal filmmaking rule, but Ice Princess is certainly an interesting example.

The film was written by Hadley Davis and directed by Tim Fywell, and I think it is, in many respects, a master class in writing, dialogue, and plot. But what makes it work isn't just the mechanics of the screenplay. It's the fact that the movie believes in itself.

It isn't embarrassed to be a movie about teenage girls.

And, perhaps most importantly, the women in this movie are allowed to have relationships with each other that aren't centered around a man.

A woman writer. A woman producer. A story about women.

And they never once fight over a fucking boy.

Thank you.

Joan Cusack.

I remember being so emotionally affected by Ice Princess when I first saw it that I'm pretty sure I wasn't even sure whether or not I liked the movie.

I think part of that was because, even though I was incredibly lucky to grow up during what I still consider to be an absolute golden age of content for young girls—The Cheetah Girls, Hannah Montana, anything starring Lindsay Lohan, High School Musical, The Princess Diaries, the list goes on—I wasn't necessarily accustomed to seeing performances with this level of emotional weight in a children's movie.

And then Joan Cusack showed up and said:

I'm going to play this mom like my life depends on it, bitches.

Joan Cusack is incredible in this movie.

The relationship between Casey and her mother is complicated in a way that feels genuinely honest. Her mom isn't some evil villain standing between her daughter and her dreams. She's a mother who is scared. She's trying to protect her daughter. She's carrying her own expectations and disappointments. She knows the world that they live in and knows that it’s not a wish granting factory. This theme and conflict with her character may have been lost on me as a kid but they make for a richer and enhanced rewatch as an almost thirty-year-old.

And Casey isn't simply an innocent little girl whose dreams are being crushed by an oppressive parent.

She's a teenager. She can be selfish. She can be impulsive. She can be wrong. Qualities that make her a real person.

That's what makes the conflict work.

The adults in this movie are actual characters and they interact with the younger actors who are able to hold their own.

Kim Cattrall is also fantastic, and it genuinely warms my heart that she and Joan Cusack were top-billed on this project. Looking back at the movie now, I'm especially struck by how much talent was assembled around a story that was ultimately being made for little girls.

They didn't phone it in. They showed up to make this banger film on a low budget and it ended up not making that much money. They probably knew it wouldn’t make much money and they made it any way.

Michelle Trachtenberg and Hayden Panettiere

And then, of course, there are the two young women at the center of this movie.

Michelle Trachtenberg and Hayden Panettiere.

Both of them were phenomenal.

Trachtenberg's Casey is awkward, ambitious, intelligent, stubborn, and incredibly easy to root for. She feels like a real teenage girl rather than an adult writer's approximation of what a teenage girl might sound like.

And then there's Hayden Panettiere as Gen.

Hayden was one of those actors who just had it, girl.

I remember her performances from Ice Princess, Bring It On: All or Nothing, I Love You, Beth Cooper, and the Scream franchise sticking with me when I was younger.

I could do an entire blog post about Scream 4. Stay tuned. That may happen this spooky season.

Rewatching Ice Princess now carries an additional weight because of Hayden's recent passing.

When I saw Ice Princess sitting there on Disney+ this weekend, I knew I had to turn it on.

There are actors you remember because they were famous when you were growing up. And then there are actors whose performances become part of the fabric of your childhood. Like older siblings, they were almost omnipresent in my childhood. Other examples for me would be Emma Roberts, JoJo, Sara Paxton to name a few. Hayden was one of those actors for me.

Her performances in these movies and shows were a part of the entertainment landscape I grew up in. And watching her now, knowing that we won't get to see where that talent could have gone next, is heartbreaking.

Her light shined so brightly, and I can't help but feel like it ended before we ever got to see its full intensity.

Who Are You?

There's a metaphor I saw someone use on TikTok a while back that really stuck with me. Imagine that at birth, you’re given a sweater. The sweater doesn’t fit you right and it makes you itch. You think about taking it off but everyone else around you not only wears the sweater comfortably and effortlessly but they talk extensivley about how much they love the sweater and how well it suits them. You go on for years convincing yourself and others that you like the sweater but you know the truth. One day, a string appears and you make the choice to pull it. It’s a brave choice but you do it and you pull and pull until the sweater unravels. At first it’s scary but you can’t help but feel relieved and free. You eventually find another sweater that is different from what everyone else around you is wearing but you’re not itchy anymore. Eventually, you start to meet other people who made the same choice you did. They too unraveled the sweater that wasn’t comfortable for them and found one that was.

The creator on TikTok used this metaphor in response to the idea that being queer is a choice. So many things are out of our control. Sexuality, the sex we are assigned at birth, our likes, and our interests. What is the choice is whether or not to live your truth diva!

The Gen and Casey dynamic in this film is hot and spicy and even though it isn’t overtly wlw, in my mind, Casey ends up ditching the Zamboni driver and following her heart (again) and goes for Gen and they live happily ever after.

But alas, this movie isn’t about that.

It's about a girl realizing that she is allowed to want something badly enough to pursue it.

It's about mothers learning that protecting their children doesn't necessarily mean protecting them from failure.

It's about teenage girls being complicated human beings.

And it's about taking those girls seriously.

So regardless, it resonates to this queer right here.

I miss movies that aren't afraid to be earnest. This rewatch reminded me just how much of my childhood was shaped by movies like this and how lucky I am to have grown up during Kenny Ortega’s prime.

Maybe I'm romanticizing it. Obviously, nostalgia is powerful, and I am absolutely susceptible to it. I wrote a whole movie about it called Bitter, Sweet Nostalgia.

But I don't think I'm imagining the difference.

There was something special about the era of Ice Princess, The Princess Diaries, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, High School Musical, The Cheetah Girls, and all of the other movies and shows that made little girls feel like the entertainment industry had actually made something for them.

And I want that back.

Not another reboot of something I loved.

Not another legacy sequel where the joke is that I remember the original.

I want something new.

Something that an eight-year-old in 2026 can watch and make her entire personality for the next six months.

Something she'll rewatch when she's 29 and suddenly realize why her mom cried during that one scene.

Something that makes her feel seen.

Something that takes her seriously.

Because, respectfully, the kids are not alright.

And I think they deserve their own Ice Princess.