What can I say about the new Nancy Drew movie? I really did want to go see it with my friends (in fact, it was MY idea that we go), but about an hour before it was time to go, I suddenly wondered if this was such a great idea after all. I KNEW Nancy was going to be all wrong in that movie, so why in the world did I want to go see it?
It sure isn’t a very popular movie. When we walked into the theater ten minutes before the movie was supposed to start, we thought we were getting a private screening! But then right before it started another group (women who were quite a bit older than we were!) came in. It was just us, though.
I am glad I saw it, but….Nancy was all wrong! WAY wrong! I was expecting a “modern Nancy Drew”…like Veronica Mars. This Nancy was too young, too perky, too 1950s and 1970s both at the same time. It was like they took a teenager from the 1950s, dressed her in clothes from the 70s and then plopped her in L.A. in modern times with modern teenagers. Bess and George looked right (they looked better than the Bess and George from the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys TV show that I watched religiously every Sunday night in the 1970s), but they were hardly in the movie at all. Ned was way wrong, too. In fact, he was just plain irritating.
So what DID I like about it? Well…every cliche’ from the series made it into the movie (and yes, I liked that). There was a secret passage, Nancy was kidnapped, she was chloroformed, she was knocked unconscious…at first all this stuff just made me cringe. It all seemed so out of place in the modern world. But then I sort of got into it, and I remembered this was what the books were like…and it made me think they were actually SPOOFING the original Nancy Drew because they KNEW they couldn’t do a modern Nancy Drew any other way?
How in the world do you modernize Nancy Drew anyway? SHOULD Nancy Drew be modernized? (I guess she has been in a sense…I understand the newer books are quite a bit different from the originals.)
Actually, Nancy Drew came up yesterday in my teen writers’ workshop. Yesterday was “character day,” so I asked the kids to name some good characters. Nancy was mentioned. I was curious whether today’s kids enjoy Nancy Drew as much as I did. Can they relate to her at all? The homeschooled girl certainly could. And the girl who brought Nancy up in the first place could. A third girl had seen the movie from the 1930s (I had forgotten about that…I think there were several Nancy Drew movies from the 30s), but she’d never actually read any of the books. And nobody else admitted to having actually read any of them, either.
I don’t know…some things just shouldn’t be modernized. If you’re looking for a modern day Nancy Drew, try Sammy Keyes…or Veronica Mars…
So tell me…I read that the mystery was about an unwed pregnancy. Do they make a huge deal of it? Would that fact go over my kids’ heads? If I don’t want that sort of thing glorified, am I better off not letting my kids see the movie?
Hmm…trying to decide what to tell you so I don’t give too much of the story away, but at the same time give you the information you want. I DID have to stop and think when you said you read it was about an unwed pregnancy. It was??? But yeah, I guess it was…I don’t think they glorify unwed pregnancy. The two “loved each other very much,” if that helps. I don’t remember anyone coming right out and SAYING the two weren’t married, but I can certainly infer that they were not.
Overall, it really is a very “wholesome” movie. I wouldn’t hesitate to bring kids to it…but I may have different standards than somebody else.
That helps! Thanks. I think the thing was in the Movie Mom review in our paper. She usually picks up on things I’d never even think about, so I did wonder if she was blowing it out of proportion! I really don’t have huge issues about this, but if that was the whole story, I thought that was strange for a kids’ film!
Honestly, I never thought about it until you put the idea in my head. Then I realized, yeah, I guess the idea of an unwed pregnancy does play in there. Really, it’s a story about Nancy going to stay in a mysterious, old house where a former movie star died years ago. And in typical Nancy Drew fashion, it brings up one question after another — Who was this woman? How did she really die? Was foul-play involved? Who is this cantankerous old caretaker? What does he know? Is there a ghost? It’s NOT a case of “oh no! Someone had sex before marriage. Let’s find out all we can about that.” Unless you’re somebody who really has strong feelings about this, it’s not likely to be a big deal to you.
thank you for the heads up!
Now I’d really like to go back and see the old Nancy Drew movies from the 1930s…
I read the Nancy Drew series religiously (my older sister had the original books). Then they updated the books and I was very disappointed. Some things are better left alone, I think. I saw previews of the movie and she struck me as kind of dingy, so I pretty much made the decision not to see it. If it’s truly a SPOOF, however, that puts a whole new spin on it. Now I’m kinda tempted…
She WAS kind of dingy…I think they were going for innocent, but it came across as dingy in more than one place. I don’t know for sure whether they were intending it to be a spoof, but I saw it that way.
I too Love Nancy Drew
I thought she looked too young.
I’ve made a no-budget production (mainly for fun) of a character (what I think Nancy would be today) called C.C. Brite. She’s a little different from Nancy (had to make it my own). But many people tell me this is more in the style of the books than the movie is.
Please check it out yourself (but please remember the budget for my film wouldn’t buy Emma Roberts dinner!).
Here’s the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmAhIguLVKY
Re: I too Love Nancy Drew
took me a while, but cool movie!