Review of Nancy Drew (2007) by Matthew S — 08 Sep 2008

What would happen if Nancy Drew promised to abstain from sleuthing? Apparently nothing at all different. She would seemingly barely even acknowledge such a promise had ever been made while crawling through secret entryways in purportedly haunted mansions. She occasionally mentions it as dialog, but her actions lack even a smidgen of inner conflict between her need to help people and her desire to keep her promise to her father.

What would happen if the eccentricly intelligent Nancy Drew was moved from the small town that understands her eccentricities to another town full of obnoxious teen girls who deride intelligence and competence? Apparently a short section of cruel high school pranks followed by the new extra characters all but disappearing from the film. Even one of the characters she actually becomes friends with disappears near the end and doesn't even get the courtesy of a goodbye when Nancy moves back to her old neighborhood. The entire conceit is a waste of screen time. The change in location has no bearing on Nancy's development as a character, nor is it necessary for the plot.

They had some good ideas that could have made for a quality family film but tried to appeal to too many audiences at once with too divergent ideas, while also making a by the book Nancy Drew mystery, which left each section unfinished and not properly integrated into one whole. It fails as a post modern examination of Nancy Drew (the main focus of the trailers), and fails as a remix of the formula by imposing a new limitation.

The actual mystery seems quite suited for a Nancy Drew story. It's not overly complicated, but it's also not stupid, or incompetently structured, which is frankly a shock at this era in teen cinema.