feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2007-11-08 09:11 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2007-11-08 09:11 pm
REVIEW: Nancy Drew (2007)
Film review: Nancy Drew (2007)
Directed by: Andrew Fleming
Written by: Andrew Fleming and Tiffany Paulsen
Based on the Nancy Drew series written by 'Carolyn Keene'
Starring: Emma Roberts,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479500/
The Riddle of Reinventing Nancy Drew
I went to see this film, as a childhood fan of Nancy Drew, both the classic version, mainly known through reading Armada paperbacks, and the late eighties revamp 'The Nancy Drew Files', when Titian-haired Nancy became strawberry blonde. I knew that I wasn't the primary target demographic for the film, I went in to the cinema prepared to mock, and nitpick, based on what I'd heard about the plotline. I also knew that I'll probably never fully outgrow the fan in me. The beginning sequence where the camera closes in on a bookcase of, I think, Nancy Drew titles made me gasp with delight. The image then turned into pen and ink illustrations of Nancy's adventure, changing again into live action. I left the cinema feeling charmed despite myself.
The film has to tackle with the problems of adapting an iconic but flat character who has already been reinvented by countless Carolyn Keenes for generations of girls. Nancy is an early twentieth century gal, and this is the twenty-first century. It's not a new conundrum for Hollywood, which is doing a run on nostalgic properties, be they TV shows or booksin an attempt to cash in, due to creative bankruptcy, because it's human nature to retell stories. With an echo of The Brady Bunch Movie, where the old-fashionedly wholesome Bradys are dropped into the modern world, the decision is made to play Nancy 'straight', rather than bring her bang-up to date in every regard - for that, look to Veronica Mars - but to put her in today's world, superficially at its brashest, by sending her to LA. Even so, Nancy doesn't have to deal with blood, this is mild peril territory.
A key scene for this culture clash and the film's attitude is when a stylist at a hip clothes store, instead of giving her a makeover, praises Nancy's retro look for its 'sincerity'. Now, this is rich from a film where Bruce 'The Smirk' Willis cameos, and yet, Emma Roberts as Nancy somehow pulls it off, making for a winsome girl heroine. Although Roberts's Nancy seemed very young to be driving somehow, which just emphasised that I'm British, a grown up, and that when I was reading the Nancy Drew mysteries, her late teen self seemed ever so aspirationally old. I suspect that the film-makers cast her young with an eye to the audience identifying with her, keeping the certificate low and starting a franchise.
We first see Nancy Drew at home in the Brigadoonesque River Heights, where she's talking down some criminals and making a pretty impressive escape. For all that she talks about and uses digital recordings, a cellphone and an Apple Mac there's something essentially old-fashioned about her and her quaint home town, which has the same feel as the settings for cosy, nostalgic daytime TV mysteries, only more so.
I was irritated when I heard that the bulk of the film was going to be set in LA - it felt self-indulgent, and this film is a bit. If they wanted a fish out of water story, why not go to New York and aunt Eloise? I'm still a bit miffed at the lack of Bess and George (and didn't George have short dark hair? I didn't recognise the girl who was meant to be her for a while.) The two chums are far more important in the grand scheme of the books than Ned, as Nancy's erstwhile companions in sleuthing. But his presence is ramped up in the film, he too gets to cross over from 'River Depths, of one of the flyover states' to be a sidekick, although his romance with Nancy is light and chaste. His 'rival' is a 12 year old outsider of a boy from Nancy's school, who wasn't as funny as I think he was meant to be. There is no Togo, but there is Chief McGinis and Hannah Gruen is more or less relegated to a running joke about the efficacy of her baking in making Nancy friends/getting her information.
Carson needs to go to LA on a job that may last a few months, and insists that Nancy stops sleuthing and putting herself inmild peril danger for the duration of the visit and becomes a normal teen. As over-achieving Nancy was never going to be normal, is a friendless fish out of the water among her post-ironic metropolitan contemporaries and already rented a place for them while they're in LA that has a 25-year-old mystery, he is ridiculously optimistic. The film is knowing about Nancy's square otherworldiness, but validates it, in the end (I covet her bag and its Very Useful contents), as she solves the mystery, and does so in all the classic Nancy ways. We get the iconic image of her, flashlamp in hand, exploring a secret passage! She gets knocked out once, but the foolish captors didn't even tie her up! Time and again, the contents of her covetable, sensible bag come in handy, and she has a wonderfully knowing habit of finding vital clues that help her solve the case by happenstance. By 'knowing', I mean that the writers knew their material, as they also showed by having the Drews stay at an almost Scooby-Dooish not-really-haunted house with the obligatory scary-looking groundskeeper. In fairness, she also engages in some proper sleuthing work, but more often than not, the clues fall into her lap oh so serendipitously.
But the film does something that I don't recall happening in the books - it explains Nancy's drive to sleuth and investigate as being, in part, her attempt to solve the mystery of her mother, who died before she could truly remember her. And, as Carson Drew (Tate Donovan, playing a part that's hardly a stretch after playing a weaker but wittier father in The OC) says, a lot of her drive comes from Carson himself, who's shown as being a workaholic (and really, with that house and a housekeeper, 'poverty' is a feeble justification for working so hard). There's a lot of talk about Nancy having learned to serve selflessly from the do-gooding lawyer too, which I think came from the books, but it was that insight into how her parents made her that touched me, because, as I said, Nancy is a flat character in the books - she has to be for the series to work - and a sleuth 'just because', even though it is precocious and strange if you think about it.
The film is obsessed by hobbies. Nancy, nicknamed Martha Stewart, is always at something, either as a tactic to obey her father's order and not sleuth, but mainly because she can't help herself, from making her clothes on her mother's clothes' patterns - Nancy's vintage look is a deliberate homage to learning things that can and will come in useful in her sleuthing work.
Roberts is really, really engaging, being both vulnerable and helping to sell the sincerity. Does it work, post Veronica Mars? Can we really have a heroine as wholesome as Nancy? Audiences said no, and there was some at-the-film, not with-the-film tittering from the mainly young target audience I watched it with. But I got a huge nostalgic kick out of it. Nancy falls back on her wits and is somehow cool (well, I coveted her early sixties party dress and, as I mentioned, the bag). All in all, no, the film isn't great, and if you do want to watch it, you might as well to wait for the DVD. In fact, you'll probably have to, given the amount of time I took to write this review. The central 'mystery' is really uncomplicated, and other characters' repeated inability to follow Nancy's leaps is pretty tiresome, because they're never difficult leaps to make. And while this level of mystery is true to the books, it's not going to hook anyone who isn't willing to smile indulgently at what the film is doing. Although it more or less manages to keep on the tonal high-wire, it doesn't break through to do something new, like the Brady Bunch Movie did. Still, it doesn't fall into the muddle of Bewitched wither. Definitely one if you were a fan, but although a lot of me hopes it will make new fans, I'm not sure that it will.
Directed by: Andrew Fleming
Written by: Andrew Fleming and Tiffany Paulsen
Based on the Nancy Drew series written by 'Carolyn Keene'
Starring: Emma Roberts,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479500/
The Riddle of Reinventing Nancy Drew
I went to see this film, as a childhood fan of Nancy Drew, both the classic version, mainly known through reading Armada paperbacks, and the late eighties revamp 'The Nancy Drew Files', when Titian-haired Nancy became strawberry blonde. I knew that I wasn't the primary target demographic for the film, I went in to the cinema prepared to mock, and nitpick, based on what I'd heard about the plotline. I also knew that I'll probably never fully outgrow the fan in me. The beginning sequence where the camera closes in on a bookcase of, I think, Nancy Drew titles made me gasp with delight. The image then turned into pen and ink illustrations of Nancy's adventure, changing again into live action. I left the cinema feeling charmed despite myself.
The film has to tackle with the problems of adapting an iconic but flat character who has already been reinvented by countless Carolyn Keenes for generations of girls. Nancy is an early twentieth century gal, and this is the twenty-first century. It's not a new conundrum for Hollywood, which is doing a run on nostalgic properties, be they TV shows or books
A key scene for this culture clash and the film's attitude is when a stylist at a hip clothes store, instead of giving her a makeover, praises Nancy's retro look for its 'sincerity'. Now, this is rich from a film where Bruce 'The Smirk' Willis cameos, and yet, Emma Roberts as Nancy somehow pulls it off, making for a winsome girl heroine. Although Roberts's Nancy seemed very young to be driving somehow, which just emphasised that I'm British, a grown up, and that when I was reading the Nancy Drew mysteries, her late teen self seemed ever so aspirationally old. I suspect that the film-makers cast her young with an eye to the audience identifying with her, keeping the certificate low and starting a franchise.
We first see Nancy Drew at home in the Brigadoonesque River Heights, where she's talking down some criminals and making a pretty impressive escape. For all that she talks about and uses digital recordings, a cellphone and an Apple Mac there's something essentially old-fashioned about her and her quaint home town, which has the same feel as the settings for cosy, nostalgic daytime TV mysteries, only more so.
I was irritated when I heard that the bulk of the film was going to be set in LA - it felt self-indulgent, and this film is a bit. If they wanted a fish out of water story, why not go to New York and aunt Eloise? I'm still a bit miffed at the lack of Bess and George (and didn't George have short dark hair? I didn't recognise the girl who was meant to be her for a while.) The two chums are far more important in the grand scheme of the books than Ned, as Nancy's erstwhile companions in sleuthing. But his presence is ramped up in the film, he too gets to cross over from 'River Depths, of one of the flyover states' to be a sidekick, although his romance with Nancy is light and chaste. His 'rival' is a 12 year old outsider of a boy from Nancy's school, who wasn't as funny as I think he was meant to be. There is no Togo, but there is Chief McGinis and Hannah Gruen is more or less relegated to a running joke about the efficacy of her baking in making Nancy friends/getting her information.
Carson needs to go to LA on a job that may last a few months, and insists that Nancy stops sleuthing and putting herself in
But the film does something that I don't recall happening in the books - it explains Nancy's drive to sleuth and investigate as being, in part, her attempt to solve the mystery of her mother, who died before she could truly remember her. And, as Carson Drew (Tate Donovan, playing a part that's hardly a stretch after playing a weaker but wittier father in The OC) says, a lot of her drive comes from Carson himself, who's shown as being a workaholic (and really, with that house and a housekeeper, 'poverty' is a feeble justification for working so hard). There's a lot of talk about Nancy having learned to serve selflessly from the do-gooding lawyer too, which I think came from the books, but it was that insight into how her parents made her that touched me, because, as I said, Nancy is a flat character in the books - she has to be for the series to work - and a sleuth 'just because', even though it is precocious and strange if you think about it.
The film is obsessed by hobbies. Nancy, nicknamed Martha Stewart, is always at something, either as a tactic to obey her father's order and not sleuth, but mainly because she can't help herself, from making her clothes on her mother's clothes' patterns - Nancy's vintage look is a deliberate homage to learning things that can and will come in useful in her sleuthing work.
Roberts is really, really engaging, being both vulnerable and helping to sell the sincerity. Does it work, post Veronica Mars? Can we really have a heroine as wholesome as Nancy? Audiences said no, and there was some at-the-film, not with-the-film tittering from the mainly young target audience I watched it with. But I got a huge nostalgic kick out of it. Nancy falls back on her wits and is somehow cool (well, I coveted her early sixties party dress and, as I mentioned, the bag). All in all, no, the film isn't great, and if you do want to watch it, you might as well to wait for the DVD. In fact, you'll probably have to, given the amount of time I took to write this review. The central 'mystery' is really uncomplicated, and other characters' repeated inability to follow Nancy's leaps is pretty tiresome, because they're never difficult leaps to make. And while this level of mystery is true to the books, it's not going to hook anyone who isn't willing to smile indulgently at what the film is doing. Although it more or less manages to keep on the tonal high-wire, it doesn't break through to do something new, like the Brady Bunch Movie did. Still, it doesn't fall into the muddle of Bewitched wither. Definitely one if you were a fan, but although a lot of me hopes it will make new fans, I'm not sure that it will.