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'Nancy Drew' movie review |
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Written by Roger Moore, MCT
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Monday, 11 June 2007 |
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 ___
NANCY DREW
4 stars (out of 5)
Cast: Emma Roberts, Rachel Leigh Cook, Tate Donovan, Laura Harring, Josh Flitter.
Director: Andrew Fleming.
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Industry rating: PG for mild violence, thematic elements and brief language.
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"Nancy Drew" is so far from "the cutting edge" that girlfriend can't even see the blade. A cheerfully, shamelessly old-fashioned-girl-in-new-fashioned-times mystery-comedy, it's built around the retro teen-sleuth novels written by several scribes over many decades using the nom de plume Carolyn Keene. This "Drew" is a love poem to the books and to the teens who read them, now and then.
Who says they "don't make'em like that any more?"
They've made Nancy a regular Girl MacGuyver in a movie that's just campy enough to pass for hip in a culture where teenaged girls are skin-baring pop idols, not smart cookies who solve mysteries.
Nancy (Emma Roberts) is the small-town girl most likely to crack the case when we meet her. She's busting some church burglars (Chris Kattan, unbilled, is the funnier one) and negotiating their plea as part of what nobody dares call a "hostage situation." Too scary.
Single dad (Tate Donovan, perfectly square) has had it with the crime-fighting. He moves the daughter from River Heights to the more wholesome environs of LA, where Nancy - who swears off sleuthing - has arranged for them to rent the home of a famous actress-murder victim ("Mulholland Dr.'s" Laura Harring, in flashbacks). Nancy is up to her old tricks in an instant.
Thank goodness.
She's old enough to drive (a vintage Nash Metropolitan convertible), to have her own fashion sense (think "Brady Bunch," circa 1970, penny loafers and the like).
"I like old-fashioned things," she apologizes to her sneering peers.
She's cute enough to attract boys (ever-faithful, ever-chaste Ned is back home in River Heights). She's plucky, rarely discouraged, always thinking and planning for any contingency. And she's smart enough to keep Dad in the dark as she uncovers a 35-year-old mystery that some-body doesn't want solved, that some-body might hurt her to keep her from solving.
The way the joke has to work here is that the actress playing Nancy can't let us know she's in on that joke. The delightful Ms. Roberts plays Nancy straight, as a knowing innocent, naive yet world-wise. Her Nancy is preppie, but not prissy. She's not somebody likely to let peer pressure push her into anything, as when a sharp-dressed tart from school (Rachel Leigh Cook) looks her up and down and cracks, "You're just a makeover waiting to happen."
Still, it lacks the whiz-bang action, wit and edge the material begs for. Frankly, a film starring a character who acts as if she walked right off the set of "Father Knows Best" needs a little something more to connect with an audience too young to remember "The Cosby Show."
And like too many movies these days, this one skimps on the bad guys, and doesn't give the villain enough screen time.
But if "Nancy Drew" is the start of a new franchise, parents and kids alike should rejoice. Yes, they can make'em like that any more.
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