YMMV / A Cinderella Story

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • As cruel as Shelby was, she was tricked into thinking Sam was trying to hurt her. It's less an interpretation of how bitchy she is and more of how justified she might have been in her Kick the Dog moment.
  • Austin's father was at the pep-rally, and is one of the few people who looks sorry for Sam. This might explain why he got over Austin throwing the game for Sam's sake so quickly.
  • Fiona may have killed Sam's father. It is at least safe to say he would possibly still be alive if it was not for her.
  • It is possible that Sam rejected Terry because she doesn’t want to be mocked for dating a nerd, despite being unpopular, too.
• Base-Breaking Character: Austin. Some see him as the perfect match for Sam due to being a Lovable Jock, while others think otherwise due to his emotionally cheating on Shelby and his rather questionable decision in rejecting Sam after finding out she was "Cinderella".
• Cliché Storm: A girl gets picked on at school by a mean cheerleader, gets a makeover and gets together with a popular jock. It’s really your typical high school comedy with a Cinderella Plot thrown in.
• Designated Hero: Austin emotionally cheated on Shelby with an innocent girl, and rejected Sam for being, well, a waitress (nor did he seem to care about her well-being in the first place). His only redeeming qualities are that he is rich and pretty.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Throughout the movie, Sam is constantly worried that Austin won't like her for who she is. Turns out she was completely right! He wants nothing to do with her when he finds out she is a mere "Diner Girl" and makes no effort to defend the poor girl he just put through hell. Hell, the entire school turns on her for being a waitress.
  • The scenes where Fiona body shames Sam, knowing that Hillary Duff had an eating disorder.
  • Also there is a drought that's occurring in the film where Fiona balks at Sam wanting to lay off watering the lawn for conservation reasons◊. Now about a decade later, there is a Real Life drought in California with many wealthy residents that are refusing to do their part for conservation.
• Hollywood Homely: It's Hilary Duff in a baseball cap! It's hard to believe that Hilary Duff would be considered a "loser" in this at all. Though to be fair, the only person who ever says she's unattractive is Fiona, who is implied to be jealous of her. That aside, it's remarked on about how pretty Sam is by (at least) Carter and Terry, when she's dressed normally. She wears a baseball cap because she's a tomboy who likes baseball.

• Jerkass Woobie: Shelby. She loses everything to Sam. Which includes her boyfriend as well...
• Love to Hate: Fiona is an absolutely horrible person with no redeeming traits of any kind but Jennifer Coolidge makes her a joy to watch every time she's on screen and makes her final fate even more satisfying.
• Moral Event Horizon: Sam is bullied and abused throughout the film, but the one moment fans won't forgive her tormentors for is the cruel skit they made up just to make fun of her in front of the school. Specifically, Alpha Bitch Shelby is primarily blamed for this, but her stepsisters were involved in it as well.
• Signature Scene: The climax where Sam tells off the people who wronged her throughout the film and tells Austin that "waiting for him is like waiting for rain in this drought: Useless and disappointing" is easily the most well-known part of the film.
• Strangled by the Red String: Despite the film trying to depict Sam and Austin as soulmates, Austin completely rejected her for being unpopular and never seemed to care about her well-being to begin with, giving the impression that the writers only had them end up together because of plot convenience.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The pep-rally scene. To further rub salt in the wound, there is also a scene shortly afterwards with people laughing at Sam in the hallway.
  • Just the fact that Sam has to suffer years of endless abuse from the student body and an awful stepfamily for no reason should be enough.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Or at least the obvious one. When "Cinderella" is fleeing from the dance, she drops her cell phone. Austin finds it, and comments that it's locked. In keeping with the fairy tale, you'd expect the cell phone to serve as the Glass Slipper, with him trying to get his many admirers to unlock it with Sam ultimately proving herself. Instead, Sam is outed in a completely different way, and the cell phone turns out to be irrelevant to the plot.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The main gimmick - that Austin and Sam only know each other anonymously through internet chat rooms - firmly roots the movie to the 2000s. Their cell phones are also the now-outdated flip phones of the time. Additionally, social media doesn't play any part in the story, and it would have factored into the plot had the movie been made even five years later. The lack of attention paid to the bullying at school roots the movie to the 2000s as well. Astrid is also dressed in the typical early 2000s Pop Punk style. It’s basically your typical 2000s high school comedy with a fairytale-type plot.
  • The movie just barely missed the Great Recession and it shows, especially the idea of portraying the unemployed as lazy and people who work for family as victims and not the lucky ones. It's tempting to think if the movie came out a few years later, Fiona would have given her daughters cushy hostess jobs at the diner and kept Sam as a housemaid. Or got away with mistreating her by claiming she was an unpaid intern. There'd probably even be a throw-away line with Shelby working at her father's company.
  • Given how bad New Jersey was impacted by the recession, Sam's dream of running away to Princeton seems unbelievably stupid in hindsight.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: As stated above, Sam still hooks up with Austin at the end of the film in spite of the latter not coming to her defense when she gets publicly humiliated. Sure, she calls him out on it and he makes amends to her at the end, but still.
• The Woobie: Sam, who like many other variations of Cinderella tragically loses her father and is abused by her step-family, and bullied horrendously at school, until she finally earns her happy ending!

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