When we meet this modern day prince of Denmark -- whose Shakespearean favorites tend more to Romeo and Juliet than Hamlet -- he is busying getting his mug plastered all over the tabloids. As Prince Edvard Valdemar Dangaard, Mably gives an endearing performance as a spoiled but likeable and insanely good-looking prince. Convincingly regal, James Fox and Miranda Richardson play his mom and dad, more properly known as King Haraald and Queen Rosalind. The movie's second best relationship is that between the prince and his smile-free, hard-working manservant, Soren (Ben Miller, who looks like a young Tim Roth).

Across the Atlantic, Paige Morgan (Stiles) is a single-minded pre-med student who wants to save the third world if she can just get the grades to make it into Johns Hopkins. The movie is filled with smartly written lines, and the first of these is delivered flawlessly by Stiles when the hard-driven Paige returns to her dorm room for the beginning of the school year. "This year," she tells her roommate, "we do the dishes every three weeks whether we need to or not." And then adds, "And by 'we,' I mean 'you.'"

The prince, who has become bored with the girls back home, is intrigued by a television ad about "The Girls of Wisconsin," who supposedly get drunk every night on campus and take off their tops. Prince Edvard decides to go incognito, as just "Eddie," to American's heartland to be an exchange student for a year at Paige's college. When Eddie and Paige first meet, it is anything but love at first sight. She is deliciously sarcastic to him, especially after his slightly inebriated first pickup line of "So will you take off your top for me?" She puts him down in no uncertain terms. Their romance only blossoms quite reluctantly after a couple of classes, organic chemistry and Shakespeare, force them to draw on each other's talents.

The hilarious script is amazing in the amount of good-spirited humor it can derive from such an innocent romance. An intelligent movie, it is a properly rated PG picture that is a hundred times more innocent than we've come to expect from college comedies. Both of these kids are the types that you'd want your kids to marry. Parents couldn't hope for children who grow up to be better than these two. And kids, including teenagers, watching the movie will be surprised how much it speaks to and delights them. Even formula films can be special, as this film warmly proves.

THE PRINCE & ME runs 1:50. It is rated PG for "some sex-related material and language" and would be acceptable for all ages.