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REVIEWSPREVIEWS: What A Girl Wants
What a Girl Wants is an attempt to remake Vincente Minnelli’s 1958 comedy, The Reluctant Debutante which starred Sandra Dee.
Amanda Bynes plays a 19-year-old teenager from New York City who travels to London to find the father she’s never known (Colin Firth). She discovers that he’s an archetypical British aristocrat and her ‘American-ness’ clashes comically with his upper-crust ways and lifestyle. While his wicked fiancé and her equally evil daughter try and keep this American Cinderella sweeping floors, Hollywood ensures that Cinderella rises from the ashes. The heroine is charming but klutzy as she sweeps her way into her new family members’ lives, falls for the requisite cute guy and reunites her family à la The Parent Trap.
A ‘tweener’ movie (for girls too old for The Babysitters Club but not quite ready for The Hours), What A Girl Wants modernizes Debutante. In the original film, the teen’s part was a supporting role, but the screenwriters have made it the heart and soul of this movie. By the end of Debutante, Dee has become a woman, but in this 2003 update, the heroine remains a girl, albeit one with much cooler stuff, including a butler and a boyfriend.—-T. U. Dawood
How to Deal
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How to Deal stars pop princess Mandy Moore as Halley Martin, a self-absorbed and precocious teenager who thinks all relationships are destined to fail. Her belief that love “brings inevitable heartbreak, unavoidable disappointment and severe annoyance” stems from the multitude of broken relationships she witnesses, primarily the ones at home. Her disc jockey dad, Len (Peter Gallagher) is planning to marry someone Halley intensely despises while her mother, Lydia (Allison Janney) is embittered about the split. Halley’s sister, Ashley (Mary Catherine Garrison) is so into the planning of her own impending marriage that she has become a borderline nutcase, incessantly arguing with her fiancé Lewis. The last nail in the coffin is when her best friend falls for a jock only to lose him later on.However, circumstances lead Halley to succumb to the magnetic charms of her unruly classmate, Macon Forrester (Trent Ford). She realizes that the prospects of love may not be bad after all.
Moore’s powerful presence gives a boost to a movie filled with pessimism, which has the feel of a soap opera. Instead of aiming for a teenybopper audience, Mandy Moore needs to explore diversity in her choice of roles and develop her acting talents by trying more challenging fare.—-Taimur Saleem
American Wedding
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Director Jesse Dylan has presented an invitation to a wedding where everything seems to be taken out of a dream. This, of course, is the American Wedding. Considering the great response which the film’s predecessors (American Pie and American Pie 2) received, the number of guests invited to the wedding can be well imagined. They may be charmed by the lavish decoration, but invitees will surely miss the essence of the previous movies of this series.Jim, the groom-to-be, (Jason Briggs) is now an adult but still messes up things all the time, whereas his high school sweetheart and bride-to-be wants a perfect wedding, from the dress to the flowers to the dance sequences. Stiffler, the old troublemaker, has to behave if he wants an invitation. He needs to prove that he actually cares about Jim. To do this, Stiffler needs to be in the good books of the bride’s hot sister and her parents.
Frankly, if you have been to the (My Big Fat) Greek Wedding and the Indian one (Bollywood/Hollywood) last year, then American Wedding may seem to be a little trite. The script is camouflaged with raunchy and chaotic humour that guarantees maximum entertainment. The only thing missing from the flick is a plot. Stiffler steals the show in the presence of the dull and unconvincing hero Jim. Although the movie delivers, it has an incomplete feel.—-Azeem Haider
Spy Kids 3-D
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Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over takes place mainly inside a video game. Juni (Daryl Sabara) is the main character and his mission is to enter the game and rescue his older sister Carmen (Alexa Vega), who is trapped on Level 4 of the new ‘Game Over’ video game. Spy Central OSS had sent Carmen inside the game to end it before evil mastermind Toymaker (Sylvester Stallone) takes over the world. But when OSS agent Cesca Giggles (Salma Hayek) realizes that Carmen is trapped and needs help, Juni, with his quick reflexes and bravery, is the only answer. The pint-sized spy had left the agency as he was annoyed about being demoted in Spy Kids 2, but when asked to rescue his sister, he simply couldn’t refuse.There is nothing spectacular about the acting as perhaps the cast was too bored with the concept. The artificial environment lets the director take maximum advantage of 3-D technology. The message of family bonding is the core of the story quite like the earlier Spy Kids (which was thoroughly enjoyable) and Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams. The earlier installments had appeal for both kids and adults, but unfortunately Spy Kids 3-D is not likely to hold anyone’s attention for long.—Shamama Shabbir
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