Garde rapprochée

Whoa what a turkey this made for TV yarn is! Horrible acting chiefly by Mariel Hemingway who is completely unconvincing as a secret service agent. It's so bad the viewer can basically figure out what is going to happen scene to scene. If the films "Guarding Tess" "In The Line of Fire" "Deliverance" and "Meatballs" were to be spliced together this would be the result. A couple of good spots with the whitewater rafting and that's about it.

For once, a TV movie with Aussies pretending to be Americans, instead of the more common reverse. Americans trying to sound like Aussies always sound lame.

But for once WE were the lame ones! Yay!

As an Aussie, I found this movie great, just for the accents. The plot was not bad for a made-for-TV, and the acting was OK. But the best bit was listening to the "American" characters whose accents would slip from Yank to Oz and back to Yank in the same sentence... especially one of the President's Generals, played by the dad from "Hey Dad!" (one of the funniest shows in Oz TV history)

The film was quite good but what strange locational settings have been selected for this movie. I watched with great interest as location after location that I am familiar with appeared on my screen. You see I have walked across the very bridge that is used for the final climatic scenes. (Maldon Bridge on the southern outskirts of Sydney)It's in a lonely valley and is a very rickety unstable structure that crosses a virtually dry creek bed. Ah the magic of the movies. To see the bridge blown up and have it crossing a far more substantial river. Kind of weird. Great Movie, but if you are a Sydneysider the realism may be spoiled.

"First Daughter" has deficits in all the usual made-for-television ways. Poor technical consulting, contrived miniclimaxes every so often followed by cut-to-black for commercial breaks, 2nd tier acting talent, low budget, etc. Nonetheless, this predictable fabrication manages it's genre attributes well mixing comedy, romance, suspense, action, etc. resulting in an entertaining watch.

This movie is not The Fugitive or Air Force One but it's a pretty good movie and I liked the script. If you have the opportunity to watch it, don't miss it. The plot is very interesting and both, Mariel Hemingway and Doug Savant, are convincing in their roles. Sometimes movies have a high rating and they are not what you're looking for, other times you watch movies with a low rating and get a nice surprise.