Nancy Drew.

"So lame it's... cool?" begins J Hoberman's review Andrew Fleming's Nancy Drew in the Voice. On the one hand: "Jokes like the girl detective's solemn announcement that she 'recently discovered movies aren't shot from beginning to end' or casting Mulholland Drive amnesiac Laura Elena Harring as the resident dead movie star, are launched into a void well above the target audience's head." Still: "Unavoidably arch but essentially playful in its wit, Nancy Drew neither wears out its welcome nor compromises its heroine. Nancy is unstoppable."

Updated through 6/18.

"This is a Hollywood movie that sends up bad Hollywood moviemaking, an ode to conservatism that excoriates conservative hypocrisy," writes Jeffrey Gantz for the Boston Phoenix. "And, like any good mystery, it challenges you to look closer."

"It's hard to imagine a better casting choice for the role of the spunky girl detective than [Emma] Roberts, who's transitioned nicely from her television role on Unfabulous to handling lead roles in teen flicks," writes Kim Voynar at Cinematical. "She did a nice enough job in last year's Aquamarine, but in Nancy Drew she's really found a role that fits her perfectly."

"With former tween starlets in court and rehab, daily turning up in tabloid stories more suited to Tom Sizemore than perky pink Elle Woods, Hollywood is rediscovering the appeal of a fresh-scrubbed, wholesome face," writes Sheigh Crabtree in the Los Angeles Times. "Starting this summer, a new crop of tween movie characters with big-studio backing — some endorsed by actress-producers Julia Roberts, Jodie Foster and Charlize Theron - are emerging." Also, Susan King offers a brief history of Nancy Drew.

Update: "The disappointment of Nancy Drew... is that it trusts neither its heroine nor its audience enough to approach its material with the confidence and conviction that Carolyn Keene, the pseudonymous author of the Nancy Drew books, brought to the franchise," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. The update "corrupts the clean, functional, grown-up style of the books with the kind of cute, pseudo-smart self-consciousness that has sadly become the default setting for contemporary juvenile popular culture produced by insecure, immature adults."

Updates, 6/15: "The picture seems to be geared primarily toward preteen viewers (which may explain the youthful-looking casting), but in many ways, it's steadfastly adult, a picture that admits, with every frame, a desire to hang on to everything we value about traditional modes of movie storytelling, instead of just trying to figure out what will win big at the box office," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "Nancy Drew purists may be unhappy with Fleming's admittedly tweaked vision of their heroine. But his movie captures a greater truth, I think, about the way very old and sometimes seemingly out-of-date stories can move us."

In the Los Angeles Times, Carina Chocano welcomes Nancy Drew's timing: "Just as it was starting to look as if round-the-clock coverage of rich, debauched teen train-wrecks was the only show in town, along comes a heroine - old enough to drive but too young to get decent rates on car insurance - who isn't a sociopath, a moron or a 'laid-back' invertebrate whose most salient character trait is looking hot while being supportive."

Natalie Nichols, writing for the LA CityBeat, approves.

Update, 6/16: More good girls. Rebecca Winters Keegan lists a few for Time.

Updates, 6/18: In the New Yorker, Anthony Lane imagines a dialogue between Emma Roberts and her aunt, Julia: "'[A] friend of mine said the film was like Lynch without the lesbians or the dwarves. What are lesbians, Aunt? Are they friends of Snow White's, too?' 'More than you will ever know, dear.'"

Anyway. "It's one of the few tween movies that isn't in your face; its limpness becomes appealing," writes David Edelstein in New York.

For Paul Matwychuk, it's "an odd little movie that’s got just enough interesting things going on inside it to make me wish it was good enough for me to recommend it."

Posted by dwhudson at June 14, 2007 6:55 AM