destinylives52 "After The Ball" is an interesting retelling of the "Cinderella" story. It stars Portia Doubleday as the "Cinderella" character, applying for and getting the job as the newest clothes designer for her father's company...but Doubleday does it as a man. In her disguise as an effeminate, gay guy, Doubleday creates designs that would hopefully take her father's company out of mediocrity and bring it back to its former glory days. But a conniving, mean step-mother and two step-sisters won't make things easy for our heroine. "After The Ball" has all the elements of an entertaining Rom-Com (boy and girl meet cute, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, eccentric characters, some heart-felt moments, good laughs here and there), but there's nothing special about it. What could have been an original twist on the fairy tale becomes a rehash of "Tootsie" and "The Secret Of My Success." My most memorable, movie moment is the first scene when Doubleday appears as a man -- it's astonishing how well she pulls it off.Mannysmemorablemoviemoments

squeezebox After the Ball is an entertaining little comedy that takes a few elements of Cinderella and uses them to tell the story of a young fashion designer who manages to get a job at her father's design company, only to be ousted by her stepmother and stepsisters. With the encouragement of her aunt and her actor friend, she disguises herself as a young male designer and manages to get hired back at the company where she battles the evil forces out to get her/him, but with newly found self-confidence.I was expecting nothing from this movie, but my daughter wanted to watch it and it had a rating higher than one star on Netflix, so I figured why not. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. While it's predictable in the extreme, it's genuinely funny and moves along at a good pace, with a solid screenplay and likable characters. I had never heard of Portia Doubleday before watching this movie, but her performance is terrific. She's funny, sympathetic and simply a pleasure to watch.Don't expect a profound or earth-shattering experience, but if you are in the mood for some lighthearted fun, you could do much worse than After the Ball.

TxMike We found this Canadian movie on Netflix streaming movies. It is entertaining enough once it gets past the first third or so. It seems to be inspired by the classic Cinderella story, with a wicked step- mom and two wicked stepsisters, but dad is still alive as the head of the clothing company.Cute Portia Doubleday, reminding us a lot of Amanda Seyfried, is recent fashion graduate Kate Kassell. She is trying to branch out on her own but eventually looks to her dad's company for a job.The wicked step-mom mostly runs the business, she is played by Lauren Holly as Elise , and right away we see that she and her evil but not bright daughters will try to run Kate off, first by giving her a trash assignment sorting buttons and other odds and ends in a large storage area.Kate is in fact driven off through mistreatment and lies about her, but she returns, in disguise, as Nate an upcoming designer. Of course this brings to the fore all those situations done so many times in movies where Kate and Nate have to be at the same place and dealing with others alternately as Kate and Nate. Some of that is entertaining.This is just a so-so movie but entertaining if you are in the right mood. "Mr. Big", Chris Noth is Kate's dad and the head of the company. The two evil stepsisters are played by Natalie Krill as Tannis and Anna Hopkins as Simone. Portia Doubleday is the best thing going on here. SPOILERS: It turns out the evil step-mom and her daughters were conspiring with a competitor to get the Kassell company to go bankrupt and be taken over by the competitor. Kate and her Nate, with the help of friends at work, and some crafty computer programming, expose all of it and Kate becomes chief designer while patching up her relationship with her dad.

phoenix 2 Kate is a fashion designer who dresses up as Nate in order to reveal her step mother's mal doings and save her father's fashion business. After the ball is a good enough movie for a TV movie until Kate turns to Nate. Nate is unnatural simply and he behaves very oddly for not being suspected. The rest is just the cliché fairy tale that so many movies tried to adapt and failed. Cinderella is being pushed away by her step mother and her evil but stupid dangers as she finds the love of her life with the gentle prince. The whole Nate idea is just so naive and certainly not even possible, but in just a day Kate manages to alter her personality and become someone else. Not to even mention that the clothes that they produce do not belong to a fashion company, but that is just a minor setback compared to the whole direction and presentation of the movie. Odd enough the performances are not so bad and maybe that saves after the ball from giving it a 1.