4/5 Kids ages 8-13 Will Love it!!!
  by Marc Axelrod (Potter, Wi USA)
I turn 40 on June 23rd, so I am old enough to remember the Nancy Drew books that my sister had. The movie is faithful to her character. Nancy is a precocious, mature young teenager with an aptitude for cracking complex cases. The storyline follows a similar pattern to the books: Nancy gets engrossed in a mysterious case, she makes progress, people threaten her, she gets in trouble, etc.

In this particular movie, Nancy and her dad are on business in Los Angeles. They are staying at the former mansion of the late actress Dehlia Draycott, who died under notably mysterious circumstances. Nancy is fascinated by the case and works to resolve it, getting herself and her friends in hot water in the process.

If you've never read a Nancy Drew novel, then watching this movie will remind you of a Murder She Wrote episode geared toward the kids. That's what this movie is in essence (except of course that Nancy is not a writer per se).

The film makers choose to portray Nancy as a girl who likes old fashioned clothes and old fashioned ways, yet she is also contemporary (she owns an ipod and has an Apple notebook).

Some of her peers chide her for being out of touch with the times (think Brady Bunch Movie), but Nancy is secure with herself.

I took some kids from church to the movie today, and they all enjoyed it. My wife liked it, too.



5/5 fun movie for all
  by deb (Midwest USA)
I'm not the harsh critic that others are here. I saw this movie at the theater with my adult sister, adult daughter, and young neice & nephew. All of us enjoyed the it. Beforehand, I wasn't sure about Emma Roberts as an actor, but she did a good job.

There's just is not enough family-type movies (non-animated), to go see these days. That's why I gave this one a 5-star rating. It was fun to see a haunted house and the variety of locations used. A lot of adventure and ingenuity with Nancy. Interesting characters and good dialogue. I like to see articulate, clever dialogue (does not stoop to swearing & vulgarity to get our attention), as in classic, older movies.

I plan to buy this Nancy Drew 2007 movie on DVD. And will probabaly see the sequel, too.

5/5 An INNOCENT, fun teen movie!
  by Louisa S (Tennessee)
At last- a teenage girl movie where the NICE girl doesn't change into a tramp to fit in! My nieces; ages 12, 13, & 14 LOVED it and I was pleasantly surprised that I liked it too. The clothes were adorable! The kid did a good job as Nancy Drew. I hope they make more movies in this series.

4/5 Adults who didn't like it - come on! it 's a KID's MOVIE, for goodness sake.
  by Concerned about our kids
I thought the producers, et al, did a fairly good job of modernizing Nancy Drew without totally changing the original character of the 1930s-1950s. I know; I've read the original 56 books and am a collector. My complaint is I'd wished for a more serious Nancy Drew movie, not the light comedy similar to the 1930s original movies. However, I can imagine the difficulty of creating a totally serious movie of a book character that wasn't known for realism.

The popularity of Nancy Drew has always been based on to the fact that Nancy Drew was different from other girls her age: she had the freedom that all teens craved, had plenty of money to do whatever she wanted to do, and a doting father that pretty much let her do whatever she wanted to do, because she was always very responsible and level-headed. The books were popular to parents because the character was squeaky-clean and a do-gooder with brains.

For those adults and guys who went to see it and didn't like it, what in the world were you expecting, anyway? :)

As an adult who took my daughter (a Drew fan) and her girlfriend to see it (The girlfriend never read Nancy Drew), I can report that these two from the movie's target age-group loved it.

I felt the beginning of the movie was, as a friend of mine put it--sloppy, but after the first, say, 20 minutes, the movie picked up and turned out okay. Thus, 4 stars.

5/5 Nancy Drew In LA!
  by Mel Odom (Moore, OK USA)
Nancy Drew is one of those iconic heroes kids who read tend to grow up with. I know I shared several of her adventures (read on the sly because I'm a guy) when I was younger. I read the Hardy Boys out in the public eye, along with the adventures of Tom Swift, Jr., Ken Holt, and Rick Brant.

But Nancy's adventures were always somehow more mysterious and more fun. They concentrated on the twists and the turns of the mystery, and the secrets of the suspects that Nancy had to ferret out. Although created by the Edward Stratemeyer Syndicate (as were the Hardy Boys, the Rover Boys, Tom Swift, Sr. and Jr., and the Dana Girls), most of Nancy's adventures were penned by Mildred Wirt Benson. Benson wrote some of the best Nancy Drew mysteries ever printed (23 of the first 25).

The first books came out in 1930, and movies swiftly followed due to public familiarity and interest in seeing the character on the big screen. Four Nancy Drew movies appeared in the late 1930s. In the 1970s, a television series starring Pamela Sue Martin as Nancy Drew came out. THE HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES became a hit and ran from 1977 to 1979. Television tried Nancy Drew as a series again in 1995, and a made-for-tv movie with Nancy in college came out in 2002.

Nancy Drew remains a solid sales force in video games. Based on her book adventures, the video games offer players a chance to point and click clues to solve mysteries. So far, 19 video games have come out from Her Interactive Inc. A new game was also made for the Nintendo DS game system.

Making a new movie about Nancy Drew seems almost a no-brainer. Warner Bros., the original studio that made Nancy Drew movies, returned to bring the new movie to life.

Directed by Andrew Fleming, the film is a delight for family night. Instead of having Nancy in her element in her hometown, she's thrown into wild and wooly Los Angeles where she's a fish out of water. She keeps a lot of the old-fashioned sense and sensibility from the original series, which makes her seem like a goof in modern times, and I have to admit that I wasn't entirely won over by the treatment. In fact, if it hadn't been for the sheer likeability of young Emma Roberts (father Eric Roberts and aunt Julia), I wouldn't have bought into the representation of Nancy.

What I ultimately ended up doing is filing away my preconceived imaginings of Nancy Drew and embracing this version. I no longer thought of her as the Nancy Drew I grew up with, but more like a granddaughter of the original series heroine who hasn't quite come into her own yet.

The Nancy Drew in this film isn't quite finished, but I loved the pluck and drive of Miss Roberts's presentation and thought she was fabulous.

There's actually a lot going on in the film. I think that too much of it actually extends beyond the scope of the mystery and that made the personal plots as well as the crime solving fall apart at times. We see that Nancy is an overachiever and that she doesn't fit in with the L. A. girls, but that subplot kind of staggers along till it solves itself (with the arrival of Ned Nickerson - Max Thieriot). Likewise, the mystery gets torn up by Nancy's efforts to be "normal" and make her dad happy.

I would have preferred the movie focus on the mystery and the subplots to have branched out of that. Still, there were comedic moments provided by those subplots that were enjoyable and made the film move quickly.

Since Nancy got to pick the house that she and her father live at while in L. A., she chose one with a mystery. A Hollywood actress went missing for five months and was later, after her return, found dead in her pool while at her party. The murder was never solved, and that draws Nancy's sleuth senses into overdrive.

I liked the mysterious clues, the secret passageways, and the riddles and clues that eventually lead Nancy to the solution of the murder. The film contains enough narrow escapes, chases, and threatening phone calls to keep every young detective (and mystery-loving parents) interested.

Josh Flitter plays Corky, a pre-adolescent would-be rapper Lothario that absolutely steals the show at times. He was one of the primary ingredients that kept reminding me this was not the Nancy Drew I grew up with, but I couldn't help but laugh out loud at his antics. His sense of timing and delivery is awesome, and I've just found out he's going to be in the starring role of ACE VENTURA, JR.

Bruce Willis has an uncredited cameo in the film that's funny to watch. But, again, it's one of those things that really detracts from the overall mystery. Nancy's adventures in the novels, especially the early ones, focused tightly on the pursuit of the solution.

My ten year old had seen Nancy Drew books in the school library, but we haven't read any of them yet. The movie hooked him and he sat with his mom and me to watch the whole film. He had a blast, so I can recommend this film to parents with kids wholeheartedly because he can be a tough audience.

I had a great time with NANCY DREW, and I think Emma Roberts will win over readers familiar with the teen detective in spite of the differences and escalated humor, and make new fans of kids that haven't ever seen Nancy in action before.

The special features on the disc are skinny, but worth watching. The cast and crew obviously had a good time filming this one.