Film Reviews

Uptown Girls

• Rating:
• Director: Boaz Yakin.
• Starring: Brittany Murphy, Dakota Fanning, Marley Shelton, Donald Faison, Jesse Spencer, Heather Locklear.
• Details: US / 105 mins / (12PG).

Not content with starring in one of the worst films of last year, 'Just Married', Brittany Murphy ups the ante - in what has the early potential to become a Demi Moore-esque career. An excursion for people who don't like their movies to have anything resembling a degree of wit or intelligence, the film follows the misadventures of Murphy's character, Molly Gunn. A spoilt brat, she's the daughter of a dead musician who lives off his royalties, with little regard for anything even bordering on developing a character. Things take a turn for the worst when her fortune goes missing, and Molly's got to get a real job. Before long, she's nanny to Ray (Fanning), the snotty nosed daughter of a record executive (Heather Locklear). Of course, you don't need me to tell you that Ray and Molly have very little time for each other in the early days, but they come to realise that they may be more similar than either is prepared to admit. Throw in a skewered romance with a young rock star, and you've pretty much got 'Uptown Girls' all sussed out. Desperately unfunny fare that tries to be all things to all women, 'Uptown Girls' celebrates the worst excesses of the Hollywood coming of age comedy drama. With the script hindered by so many unlikeable conventions - precocious youngster, life lessons in the broadest strokes, a hypocritical moral - it'd need casting of inspired proportions to make the film merely watchable. Unfortunately Murphy's druggy chic is predictably banal, provoking little in the way of sympathy, while the uberconfident Fanning is, truth be told, rather scary. And when that's about the kindest thing that can be said for a film, it's clear that its problems are only beginning. And if you find yourself watching this tripe, so will yours.

Review by Garreth Murphy