Bancando a Detetive

I love Maggie Lawson on "Psych," and I love Nancy Drew, so I was interested to see this 2002 "Nancy Drew." My experiences with Nancy in the past include the books, of course, Bonita Granville in the films, and the Pamela Sue Martin TV series, which I don't remember at all.

In this incarnation, Nancy is in college with Bess and George. As a journalism major working on the school paper, she becomes interested in a football player who becomes comatose from taking ephedrine, and it's suspected that his girlfriend, a medical student, gave him the drug. Nancy sets out to find the truth.

Lawson is pretty, flirtatious, confident, and spunky. Is she Nancy from the books? No, and I wonder if today it's possible to even capture her. The times are different, for one thing. Unlike some other book characters, Nancy Drew was never considered a good character for the movies, which is why the character created by Bonita Granville was so different. The book Nancy was pretty, serious-minded, intelligent, courageous, wore "frocks" and went to "luncheon" with Bess and George. Granville was hyperkinetic and constantly dragging Ted (not Ned, the studio changed his name) into dangerous situations. She was always in trouble. There was no Bess and George.

Reading over the reviews on this site, it's interesting that some people have no familiarity with the films or the TV show. There was a complaint that Nancy is not a strawberry blonde here. At least she's blonde - she's been brunette in other incarnations. Someone else wrote that she must have had a million dollar bank account for a car like that. Nancy was always well-to-do - she never worked and she always had her own car. Someone else mentioned Nancy driving like a maniac. That undoubtedly comes from the Bonita Granville movies, which depicted Nancy as a reckless driver.

The Nancy character from this "Nancy Drew" is updated more from the films than the books, but it keeps all of the book characters, and they all use their book names.

Bottom line - if Nancy wasn't well-adapted from the 1930s books to 1930s films, there's no chance she's going to be well-adapted from the 1930s books to 21st century films or TV movies. As a regular story that has little relation to Nancy Drew, it's pleasant enough. Scarlett O'Hara, Mrs. Dewinter in Rebecca, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, etc. - none of these ever had to be updated; they were done in the period in which they were written. When a 2002 script doesn't even adapt an actual Nancy Drew story from one of the books, the task of creating a modern Nancy becomes impossible.

As feminist role model for young women, Nancy Drew can't be beat. She's eternally popular whether it's Bonita Granville in the Thirties, Pamela Sue Martin in the Seventies and now Maggie Lawson for the new millenia. Maggie is a worthy addition to her predecessors.

Nancy competes with men at their own game and shows them up quite frequently. She's intelligent, pretty, resourceful, who wouldn't want a girl like her or be threatened by her if the male ego wasn't too secure. Brett Cullen is her infinitely patient father Carson Drew who while he keeps cautioning her, really admires how his daughter has turned out.

Nancy's a little older now, she's in college as a journalism major, this generation's Nancy has grown up with tales of the exploits of Woodward and Bernstein and for one who's got a terminal case of snoopiness, this is the field for her.

When a star halfback on the school's football team has a stroke at the ripe old age of 20, her curiosity is more than piqued. She's got quite a scoop when it turns out he's been taking performance enhancing steroids. But is it illegal and if so, where does the blame lie?

Sabine Singh turns in a nice performance as the halfback's girl friend and Nick Stabile is around as Nancy's ever dependable friend Ned Nickerson. In keeping with the updating of these stories, Ned's a computer geek now and his expertise in hacking, helps Nancy get her story and nearly lands her in jail.

This version of Nancy Drew is nothing great, but it's every bit as good as the B picture product Warner Brothers did back in the day. And Nancy is still the best investigator around.

Maggie Lawson has all the necessary All-American Girl looks to play the feisty teen-aged sleuth and she's okay in a fast-talking way to be convincing as an investigative detective. But unfortunately, the plot gets bogged down in a lot of petty sorority doings without a hint of mystery showing up until later on--and by that time you don't care.

The Nancy Drew of old is not here--instead we have a brassy, overbearing heroine with a rich girl background and her equally obnoxious teen-age girlfriends all given the latest slang expressions and one-liners in a script that's determined to update the famous series if not improve it. None of the happenings have the sort of mysterious quality called for in the Carolyn Keene mysteries.

Another bad case of "updating" in an attempt to modernize the old-fashioned charm of the original. It rings false from beginning to end.

As the movie opens, an impossibly confident Nancy Drew is weaving her way through traffic while talking on her cell phone. As she starts college, she moves into an apartment-style dorm room with two perky friends and a third roomie with a strong Spanish accent who otherwise looks as if she belongs with the group. The girls try to get into Tri Pi sorority, full of adorable perky girls. At this point it seems this movie is going to be just so much fluff. Not so; one of the Tri Pi girls has to go with her football player boyfriend to the hospital, and the rumor is that the girl, a pre-med student, supplied the boyfriend with performance-enhancing drugs. Nancy tries to solve the mystery but encounters many roadblocks and ends up going too far, discovering that her actions have consequences, including her arrest. Her objective is to satisfy a journalism professor so evil he makes Professor Kingsfield look like a teddy bear. Can she do it? This is a Disney movie, isn't it? The formula is to overcome obstacles and reach a goal, though it may not be the exact goal you expect. Or maybe they went against the formula this time. You'll just have to watch.

I really enjoyed watching "Nancy Drew" I thought Maggie Lawson did a wonderful job portraying her!! And it was just a fun movie to watch! It was also great to see how the sorority life is! It was kinda cheesy but it made it funny! And they had really cute clothes! I would reccomend it for someone who is looking for a light harted movie! (Oh but I didn't understand the ending. Towards the end I was studing for mid-terms so I might have missed it, but it was still good!) Hope you like it !

Love, Kate!