Asymmetric Movie Review: Nancy Drew

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Asymmetric Movie Review: Nancy Drew

08/01/07

A mystery movie for the tween-set, those children too old for Barney and too young for CSI, Nancy Drew mostly succeeds in delivering a fun, lightly suspenseful movie and parents would do well to place Nancy Drew on the top of their daughter’s Netflix queue if they miss it in theaters.

In Nancy Drew, Nancy (Emma Roberts), an intelligent, curious girl whose only flaw is an addiction to crime solving, moves from the lovely small town of Silver Lake to the lovely large town of Los Angeles with her father where she’s thrilled to find that her new house was the scene of the mysterious disappearance of Dehlia Draycott, a famous movie actress from the fifties. An inspection of Draycott’s room causes Drew to suspect that Draycott disappeared because she was pregnant and, in a series of clever scenes, Drew tracks the daughter down to inform her of her good fortune. The good fortune is both figurative and literal as the daughter, struggling single mother Jane Brighton, would be due to inherit Draycott’s considerable estate if she were known to exist.

It would be easy to take Ms. Brighton to the lab for a DNA test, but some people would rather Draycott’s daughter not take the money they now manage and these are the people Nancy must outsmart. And outsmart she does: Instead of high tech gadgets or physical violence; Nancy relies on girlish charm, Macgyver-like resourcefulness, and psychological insight.

Meanwhile, Nancy Drew must also cope with the culture shock of her new big-city high school, separation from her boyfriend, and a diminutive admirer.

The performances are very good and the writers fill Nancy Drew with some well-crafted moments of genuine anxiety. If you’re inclined to like Nancy Drew, you assuredly won’t be disappointed and you may even be pleasantly surprised at the quality of production.

Message/politics:

Nancy Drew is a decent girl in the anachronistic sense, meaning that she’s respectful, only rebellious enough to make her interesting, and modest both in word and dress. This fact makes Nancy Drew a target for would be liberators; the cool, cynical teenager usually admired in Hollywood. Two cool teenagers at school do, in fact, try to shoehorn Nancy Drew into today’s hoochie-girl culture by taking her shopping for modern clothes and tempting her, during a party, with those things tempting to teenagers. In most movies, the cool kids succeed (Footloose, Grease, Rebel Without a Cause, etc.)

But Nancy Drew turns the table on them. At the boutique, its Nancy’s retro-60’s clothes that win praise from the salesperson, and it’s her knowledge of CPR, a skill previously mocked by her new friends, that saves a life at her party. Score one for the squares.

Nancy Drew continues the Hollywood tradition of girls being raised by their single fathers (Little Mermaid, Casper, etc.). I’m not sure why this relationship dynamic is more cinematically compelling than a mother-daughter one, but it may have to do with the tension inherent in opposite-sex relationships. Or, it could be the feeling that single fatherhood is a noble gesture for a man while single motherhood is both more common in our society and somewhat expected of women.

Emma Roberts