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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.

Nancy Drew (Maggie Lawson) starts college with best friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne. She has garnered some fame from her sleuthing in River Heights High. Duke Shifflin is her journalism professor. Hank Luckman is bumbling student. Bess wants to pledge a sorority and Nancy goes in support. Christina 'Teeny' Timkins is the bossy girl who has to pledge her mother's sorority. Allison Price is Tri-Pi president. Her boyfriend star linebacker Jesse goes into a coma rumored to be drugs and Nancy Drew senses a mystery.

I am not a big fan of Nancy Drew. I have never read any of the books. I don't know any Nancy Drew story. The TV Nancy Drew with edge for me is Veronica Mars. Nancy is new to college and it would be better for her to start out alone. While Bess and George are a part of her series, nothing is more TV than having a bunch of kids go from high school to college together. That's not a good thing. I rather have the teen Nancy Drew in high school. This is starting a teen soap in year five and that's usually a rough spot on the decline for almost every one of these shows. This is never going to work as a pilot.

"Nancy Drew" was the most accurate portrayal of Nancy Drew I have ever seen. Though it was set in modern times instead of the 50s like the book series, the storyline was incredible and the mystery suspenseful. Maggie Lawson was the perfect Nancy Drew, capturing the beloved heroine's thirst for mystery and her confidence, glamour, and intelligence. Nancy Drew's father was protective and loving. Bess and George were played perfectly, and the invented characters were a nice edition to the story. Unlike the Nancy Drew movie that stars Emma Roberts as a brunette (Hair color is usually not important, but Nancy Drew is an icon), fidgety Nany Drew, this movie showed who Nancy Drew really was, blonde hair and all, and was incredible for a TV movie. Nancy Drew's first year of college is one that I will not soon forget.

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.

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.