...younger people should find it entertaining, and the spoofing will not be a complete waste for many adults.
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The fictional, amateur teen detective Nancy Drew entered the literary world in 1930, the stories penned by a variety of authors under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene and continuing in print, movies, and television to this day. In 1938 the Drew stories first came to the big screen when Warner Bros. produced "Nancy Drew, Detective" with Bonita Granville, the actress going on to do three more Nancy Drew films for Warners in 1939. Nancy Drew got more attention in the 1970s and 1990s with two separate television series, and again in 2002 with a television movie. The latest entry in this seven-decades-long phenomenon is "Nancy Drew," Warners' 2007 theatrical adaptation of the comedy-mystery stories. The film is lightweight, often charming, and appropriately aimed at younger viewers, especially girls.
Now, here's the thing: Keene began writing the Nancy Drew adventures in the 1930s, as I say, during a very different era from our own. Although Nancy was constantly doing battle against murderers, thieves, and swindlers, she lived in an imaginary world where sex did not exist, where she could have a boyfriend but never as much as hold his hand, where nobody smoked or drank, did drugs, or spoke a profane word. That gave the old books and movies a certain naive appeal, which the later TV series carried over. Switch to the present, where the filmmakers of this new theatrical release have tried to maintain that same innocent tone in our own modern era, with the humorous clash of the two worlds offering up the best part of the story. The film portrays Nancy as a 1950s movie teenager suddenly transplanted via some weird time machine into the twenty-first century. Obviously, the filmmakers intended the movie as a gentle spoof, a piece of tongue in cheek humor, and most of the time it's pretty amusing.
I'm not entirely sure, though, that hard-core Nancy Drew fans will appreciate the new movie. They may feel that the filmmakers, notably director Andrew Fleming ("The Craft," "Dick," "The In-Laws"), have taken too many liberties in turning Nancy into a satiric character. Since much of the film's appeal lies in juxtaposing Nancy's strict, morally upright manners with an increasingly rude, unscrupulous world, fans may think the film is being too ironic, demeaning or ridiculing their heroine. But I think if they give it a chance, they'll see that virtue does triumph in the end, no matter how out-of-date it appears. In other words, I liked the film a lot more than I thought I was going to.
Any Nancy Drew screen portrayal lives or dies by its lead actress, the original short films starring Bonita Granville setting the template. Happily, young Emma Roberts does well by the present role, depicting the amateur teen sleuth as appropriately spunky and quick-witted, yet with no sense of mockery about her. This isn't a caricature that cheapens its subject but a genuinely well-rounded characterization (of an admittedly one-dimensional character). When the kids at her new high school make fun of her old-fashioned, conservative ways, for example, she shrugs it off with an honestly understanding smile and no trace of resentment.
Things begin as they always have, with Nancy and her dad, lawyer Carson Drew (Tate Donovan), living in the stereotypical Midwestern town of River Heights, where Nancy is renowned for her crime solving. The movie's opening sequence sets a hopelessly corny tone, which may put off a lot of older viewers immediately, but hang in. The movie gets progressively more endearing as it goes along, and before too much time passes, it begins to grow on you.
In this newest episode, Nancy and her dad move from River Heights to L.A., where they lease a crumbling old Hollywood mansion that twenty-five years earlier belonged to a famous actress, Dehlia Draycott, who died under mysterious circumstances. Needless to say, Nancy immediately begins investigating the cause of her death. But that's not all. She also meets the enigmatic and slightly sinister caretaker of the house, Mr. Leshing (Marshall Bell); a twelve-year-old, Corky (Josh Flitter), who becomes her assistant; a young woman, Jane Brighton (Rachael Leigh Cook), who may have a possible connection to the Draycott death; and she even receives a surprise visit from her old boyfriend back home, Ned Nickerson (Max Theriot).
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[release]23191[/release]