Starring: Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth
Director: Dennie Gordon
Rated: PG
THE year before last we had a film entitled What Women Want. The film’s answer to that inquiry was, it’s star, Mel Gibson.
This time around what the girl wants is her dad, Colin Firth.
Daphne (Amanda Bynes) has never known who her father was. All she knew was that her parents met in Morocco and that when her mother became pregnant, he left for England and they returned to New York City. Libby (Kelly Preston) decides that now it’s time for Daphne, aged 17, to find out that her father is Lord Henry Dashwood.
Daphne drops everything and heads to London to meet Lord Henry, who is in the middle of an election campaign for a seat in the House of Commons. He did not know he had a daughter, and certainly not a brash in-your-face lass from the US.
Based on the play The Reluctant Debutante, What a Girl Wants is a remake of the 1958 film starring Sandra Dee and Rex Harrison. It may borrow the script, but alas, not the style of the earlier film.
This wafer-thin fairytale story, packaged for teenage girls and family entertainment, is corny and dull. The story is obvious, the directing is clumsy and when in doubt they sing another song.
Two things are very annoying. Firstly, the caricature of the English borders on racism. When Daphne hugs her grandmother, the Dowager Countess protests, ‘I’m British, dear, we only show affection to dogs and horses’. At least this time around the English are simply made to look stupid rather than as evil as they appear in a host of other contemporary Hollywood films.
Secondly, director Dennie Gordon can’t even work out that when it’s 1pm in London and Henry calls his former girlfriend Libby in NYC, both characters cannot be sitting in sun-drenched rooms. Sloppy.
The moral of the story is fine, reject the class system and be true to yourself. ‘Why are you trying to fit in when you are born to stand out?’ But if ever a film remake needed a make-over this was it.
