OK, so perhaps I’m going through Veronica Mars withdrawal. Fist, my main reason for wanting to see this movie was that it was directed and co-written by Andrew Fleming. His ability to make movies work way more than they should was enough to convince me to want to see this (his 1999 movie, Dick, is one of my favorite comedies). And here he is yet again, making material that should fall flat on its face work almost completely. The only real weakness of the film is some of the obligatory high school based material, of which there is thankfully very little. Ironically, that is one of the key aspects of the movie that Warner Brothers is using in their advertising (trying to attract more of the teen girl audience I suppose). I mean, the biggest downside in seeing this movie was to have to sit through the Lionsgate’s trailer for the horrible looking teen girl flick Bratz (”4Real!”) yet again. Not surprisingly, Nancy Drew is a film that is firing on more intelligent thrusters than one might think from the advertising.

Writing: Many have criticized their choice to have Nancy Drew relocated to Hollywood for the setting of the film, but I think it gives the character a nice noir aspect with a deep enough case to be engaging enough to work on the big screen. The dialog is sharp and the plotting is interesting enough to make things work. It walks the fine line of a serious investigation, a noir thriller and a light and amusing Nancy Drew charmer. It also has an amusing obsession with the word “sleuthing.”

Production: Andrew Fleming adds enough style to make things interesting and fun, but stops short of becoming overly stylized. Costume design is fun, particularly with Nancy herself, giving her a very obvious nostalgic look. Set design is gorgeous, including the well designed home they move in to.

Cast: Here’s a particularly strong aspect of the film. Emma Roberts does a fine job with Nancy Drew. Tate Donovan is charming as her father. The father-daughter vibe of the movie is another thing that brought out the nostalgic Veronica Mars fanboy in me. Supporting roles include some good, relatively unknown actors as well as some great guest casting of talented actors and a hilarious a-list cameo appearance (which I’ll keep secret). Rachel Leigh Cook is very well cast, as is Barry Bostwick. Max Thieriot is a nice fit for Ned Nickerson. And Marshall Bell is very well cast as caretaker Mr. Leshing.

Music: Long-time music supervisor Ralph Sall does his typical music supervision role as well as actually scoring this film. He has done music supervision on most (all?) of Andrew Flemings previous films. His scoring is full of great moments of golden-age music score cues as well as fun action-adventure material. Overall, it’s quite a good score. Song usage is kinda so-so, but thankfully not overly cute or teen pop. Sall turns to a fun classic, Kids In America, for the titles (clearly a favorite of it, as he’s used it previously on projects he’s worked, like Clueless).

All in all, I quite enjoyed this film. More than I expected to, actually. A nice unexpected surprise for this summer movie season.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 1:55 am and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.