Chasing Liberty: Romance and eye-candy but too much Mandy

An angry Anna Foster barges through the doors of the Oval Office, propelled forward by the outrageous grievances she has against her father. Secret service agents have just ruined her date. "I'm going to die before I ever get to third base," she angrily announces to President James Foster (Mark Harmon). A sleight of Presidential eyebrows directs her attention to the cluster of distinguished UN security officials sitting behind her. Checkmate. "We'll discuss this later," she says disgustedly and slinks off.

Mandy Moore plays Anna, the overprotected first daughter begging for room to breathe. In Chasing Liberty, she manages to elude the vast Secret Service resources under the sway of the U.S. government to take a liberating romp across Europe. Her father permits her to do this only because her traveling companion, ostensibly a random cute photographer off the street, is really undercover Secret Service Agent Ben Calder (Matthew Goode).

Goode, who makes his movie debut in Liberty is extremely enticing in action. While Moore's strongest asset lies in her extremely photogenic, doll-like face, Goode also looks great in his underwear. Drama Queen Anna is dauntingly high-maintenance, but Calder is charming and much easier to fall for, and the British accent only helps.

Both Goode and Harmon showcase admirable comic timing, making Liberty an actual romantic comedy and not merely a sad compilation of predictable jokes. But the movie's humor does not displace the many trite aphorisms uttered by Moore's character such as "I don't want to think, I want to live," and "I have this theory: If something is meant to happen, it will," that make Anna's quest for self-discovery mildly nauseating.

Moore is beautiful and engaging to watch, but her metamorphosis from pop star to actress demands more modesty than she is willing to give it. Anna experiences no actual hardship throughout her ego-fueling life and is hard to sympathize with, mostly because Moore does not really convince us that she is not playing her own spoiled self, taking her life just a little too seriously.

Screenwriters Derek Guiley and David Schneiderman say that they were first inspired to write Chasing Liberty after seeing Chelsea Clinton surrounded by cameras while in the stands at a Stanford basketball game. The movie's portrayal of Anna Foster's celebrity however, seems over-the-top. While on a diplomatic mission to Prague, Anna tours the city in a Madonna-esque white pantsuit, waving to the adoring populace, an image that reeks of presumption. Anyone short of the real Madonna would be hard-pressed to attract that kind of attention.

The evolution of Liberty's plot is a foregone conclusion, but the movie never lags. Anna's and Ben's adventures though Europe effectively integrate supporting characters such as a horny vagrant and a friendly Venetian family. The film, which was shot on eighty sets in five different countries features lovely scenery with incongruously grainy shots of the Italian and Austrian countryside, as if the producers decided to sporadically opt for low-budget shots.

Anna and Ben make an engaging couple, but who wouldn't want to go out with the dashing Ben Calder? Ben is professionally obligated to follow the flighty Anna around Europe, but she assumes he is merely smitten by her (heretofore mainly drunken) charm. This dramatic irony makes Ben's ultimate demonstration of loyalty to Anna very gratifying.

The romance and humor in Chasing Liberty make the film worth seeing. Mandy Moore simply needs to work a little harder to be believable as a teenager.

Chasing Liberty is rated PG-13 for sexual content and brief nudity.