Eric D. Snider
Nancy Drew
Movie Review
"Nancy Drew"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: B
Rating: PG
Released: Friday, June 15, 2007
Directed by:
Cast:
It's been nearly 70 years since a theatrical film was made about Nancy Drew, teen detective, so a new movie has the opportunity to introduce her to a whole new generation of moviegoers. Played with confidence and panache by Emma Roberts (Julia's niece), the 21st-century Nancy is resourceful, old-fashionedly polite, and practically addicted to the fine art of sleuthing. I can see tween girls idolizing her all over again.
Simply called "Nancy Drew," the new film brings Nancy and her dad, attorney Carson Drew (Tate Donovan), to Los Angeles for a few months for vaguely explained reasons. Nancy has promised her father that she will forsake all sleuthing (the word "sleuth" and its forms are used approximately 10,000 times over the course of the movie), yet she is powerless to resist investigating the mystery surrounding the previous owner of the house the Drews are renting during their stay in La-La Land.
It seems Dehlia Draycott (Laura Harring) was a promising young actress who disappeared for several weeks 25 years ago. After her return, she lived only a few months before winding up dead in her swimming pool. The murder, and its connection to her prior vanishing, was never solved. Why, it's a tasty old-style Hollywood mystery!
Nancy busies herself with the Dehlia Draycott mystery, aided by her new sidekick and admirer, Corky (Josh Flitter), a squatty, comical 12-year-old who you think is going to be annoying but actually turns out to be pretty funny. Meanwhile, she's trying to fit in at school, where her prim, old-fashioned clothing and general excellence at everything from athletics to math make her an outsider.
Fans of the Nancy Drew novels, mostly written in the 1930s and periodically updated since then, will find most of the basic elements intact, though the transfer from Midwestern burg River Heights to glitzy L.A. is an obvious departure. (The film's first scenes are set in River Heights, where she appears to be the only person doing any actual police work.) Still, Nancy's roadster is on hand, and so is her soon-to-be-boyfriend Ned Nickerson (Max Thieriot), who comes out to visit and to enjoy a session of hot sleuthing action. It's probably impossible to capture the exact tone of the novels without setting the film in the '30s, but the filmmakers seem to have done their best to be respectful to the old material.
The director, Andrew Fleming ("Dick," "The Craft"), who cowrote the screenplay with Tiffany Paulsen, slips in the occasional sly joke about the conventions of murder mysteries. As the Drews are moving into the Draycott mansion, the real estate agent mentions, "Oh, there's a stranger caretaker who lives in an apartment down the hill." There's always a strange caretaker in these stories, isn't there? It's nice to hear someone actually describe him in those words.
Later, Nancy's resourcefulness has been modernized so completely that she can perform an emergency tracheotomy on someone with just a pen and a knife. The film has a wry, buoyant sense of humor, and you get the feeling that odd touches like that are intentionally funny.
Now, it's only fair to mention that one of the perks of making a junior version of a Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple story is that, since it's the junior version, you don't have to be quite so concerned about the details adding up, or connecting all the dots in the sleuth's detective work. I could sit here all day and point out the flaws in Nancy's logic, or the highly improbable events that lead her to various clues. The intended audience will surely delight in their heroine's exploits, though, and who am I to spoil their fun?
Grade: B
Rated PG, imperiled youth, mild action violence
1 hr., 39 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
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This item has 21 comments
June 15, 2007 at 10:44 am
Actually, all the novels weren't written in the 30's, with updates. There have been series of them written, the last ones in the 80's and 90's that I grew up on called "The Nancy Drew Files". Basically the name Carolyn Keene became a franchise with authors ghosting the novels under that name. Formulaic, sure, but to a 12 year old who knew no better, fun.
I'm just waiting for the Hardy boys to make a screen appearance.
June 15, 2007 at 11:49 am
Well Ben Stiller wants Tom Cruise for the Hardy Boys movie (called Hardy Men). Nothing like a little crazy to make a movie interesting. (or not: War of the Worlds)
June 15, 2007 at 11:54 am
Actually, Carolyn Keene was always a "house name" - there never was a person by that name who wrote the books.
And the "periodic updates" were actually akin to complete rewrites in many cases.
Yes, I'm a guy, and I love the Nancy Drew books (as well as the Hardy Boys - they need a movie now too). I hated the "files" books for both series - they tried to hard to update the books (which usually meant more angst and explosions).
June 15, 2007 at 1:14 pm
They should put Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys together: The Nancy Boys.
June 15, 2007 at 2:39 pm
When I was a kid, I was all about The Three Investigators---Jupe, Bob and Pete. But I doubt anyone else has a clue what I'm talking about.
June 15, 2007 at 3:01 pm
#3 Ivan- You know about the Hardy Boys' author, Franklin W. Dixon, being a "house name" too, I assume, since you're a fan. There was a fascinating, touching bio of one of the most prolific Hardy Boys ghostwriters in the Washington Post a few years back. It's at The Hardy Boys: The Final Chapter. . .
My favorite was always The Yellow Feather Mystery, because of the igloo and Chet's sleigh. I never could get into Nancy Drew.
June 15, 2007 at 5:14 pm
#5, are you kidding me? I loved The Three Investigators. Remember the Green Ghost? One of my faves. I'd love to see a movie that made out the "headquarters" where Jupe, Bob, and Pete always met.
June 15, 2007 at 6:26 pm
You guys are all crazy. Encyclopedia Brown could out-sleuth them all with half his brain tied behind his back.
June 15, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Actually, there have been several books where Nancy and the Hardy Boys team up, the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Super Mystery Series. In these they always manage to meet in some out of the way place by coincidence and wind up working on coincidentally connected mysteries. Oh, and also, Nancy and Frank have the hots for each other, but Nancy invariably feels guilty about it.
P.S. I was never much of a fan of the original Hardy Boy's series, and preferred the Files version, but boy was it ever a shock when they killed off Iola for the revamp.
June 15, 2007 at 11:38 pm
I loved the Three Invetigators too. And I was aware of the Dixon house name.
Interestingly, Nancy Drew was originally 16 in the earliest books. In the later books and the "revisions" of the early books, her age was changed to 18 for some reason.
And Encyclopedia Brown was cool as well.
June 16, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I never really liked the first Nancy Drew books; I was hooked on the Nancy Drew Files, much more gruesome.
June 17, 2007 at 7:44 pm
this movie is so cute i think nancy is a good robe model and i love her to death she does what she does best and she want stop until it is done she has great dreams and she is very persistant and polite and i think if anybody wants to be like her i highly recamend it and don't think twice about it because she never did
June 17, 2007 at 10:36 pm
"A good robe model?" I didn't know Nancy Drew was into modeling! :)
June 18, 2007 at 11:08 am
You mean you never saw her in the JC Penney catalog?
June 18, 2007 at 11:50 am
#12: I would imagine that Nancy Drew is also a grammatical typist. Another wonderful trait to emulate!
June 21, 2007 at 2:30 pm
#5 and #7,
The names Jupe, Bob and Pete sound vaguely familiar... was there something about a stuttering parrot quoting Shakespeare that was really an address "222 B Street"? And wasn't Headquarters in an old RV or vehicle inside a junkyard or something that allowed them to come and go secretly? Wow, I haven't thought about that for years (many years). Jupe. That triggered it.
June 26, 2007 at 2:13 pm
To #12 aka BeeDub: You are...how you say...a douche!
June 26, 2007 at 8:15 pm
#17 A shower? Huh?
June 27, 2007 at 8:54 am
I was always a fan of Swedish triplets Snipp, Snapp and Snurr, and how they solved the mystery of how to buy their mom some red shoes. Or how they solved the mystery of learning how to swim. Or the mystery of milking the cow. Snurr was the most handsome.
July 17, 2007 at 10:22 am
#7: You mean like this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0476603/
July 27, 2007 at 5:34 pm
i hav't even seen this movie and already knows what's it about.from where i've read it's de best so far for the summer.good jod actors,actresses,directors,editors etc. i really like yor movies Emma Roberts.