Nancy Drew (***1/4)

In a 2005 Atlantic Monthly review, Sandra Tsing Loh described the character Nancy Drew as a “perfectly behaved, kick-ass goddess-sleuth.” Through over 100 novellas authored by the pseudonymous Carolyn Keene, Nancy has remained a teenager but kept pace with changing times. A few may remember her TV incarnations, most notably the late-1970s series starring Pamela Sue Martin, and fewer still her appearances in four movies in the 1930s. This incarnation cannily positions Nancy for the 2000s while maintaining that timeless quality; she uses her PowerBook to solve crime while maintaining a sense of personal style (car, dress) rooted in an earlier time. All penny-loafered and plaid, she’s perhaps inspired by the era of Mary Quant, but sensibly sews her own patterns. Sixteen-year-old Emma Roberts, who reminded me not of her aunt Julia but of Anne Hathaway, tackles the role with aplomb. Her Nancy is stylish but not flashy, brainy but not nerdy, and neither tomboyish nor girly. There’s just the barest hint of the sexual, but one gets the feeling that not only isn’t nominal boyfriend Ned getting any, but he hasn’t even thought to ask.

I’ve said nothing of the plot, which is serviceable but not more. Unimaginatively, the script finds Nancy following her widowed father out to, ho hum, Los Angeles. They stay in a house once owned by an actress who disappeared without a trace in 1981, though the Hollywood artifacts Nancy discovers have the flavor of an even earlier period. Admonished by Dad to stop sleuthing, Nancy cannot resist probing into the case in between classes. The first we see of her new school is what might be called the establishing Sodom-and-Gomorrah shot, hundreds of noisy, slovenly kids who regard Nancy’s retro duds with withering stares. For a time I feared the movie would turn into a latter-day She’s All That, wherein the teen heroine uses a makeover to improve her social status. Nancy’s new classmates do attempt to humiliate her in a silly sequence in which she unaccountably confuses CPR with the Heimlich maneuver. This also sets the stage for Nancy’s friendship with the school dork, an annoying substitute for the briefly seen George and Bess, left behind in River Heights. (Trusty Ned makes a more significant appearance.)

But Nancy shrugs off any fleeting feelings of shame and digs in her heels, risking her life but not her sense of self. It is not a high school makeover movie after all, even if She’s All That star Rachael Leigh Cook appears as a single mom. The mystery is on the creaky side, but Emma’s poise and the care with which the filmmakers have taken with the character go a long way to making up for the lapses elsewhere.

reviewed 6/21/07

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