Very well executed

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

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.

I was left utterly appalled to see what the scriptwriters and actors of this Disney film adaptation had done to Nancy Drew, the heroine in some of my favourite books through the latter years of primary school. Quite frankly, anyone who has read the books will find her character mutilated in this film.This film sees eighteen-year-old Nancy Drew starting university with her best friends Bess and George when she is drawn into the mystery of how Jesse, an up-and-coming American football player, is left comatose. Her instincts telling her there is much more to the story than meets the eye, Nancy's investigations should lead her into trouble with the police and the university officials.What was the premise for a film that could entice new readers to the books ended up just a mess and I could see intelligent young girls never wanting to see any more of Nancy Drew again after this. The tenacious, bright but modest Nancy from the novels had mutated into a egotistical, obnoxious, conceited snob who desperately needed to be taken down a peg or two before her head swelled too much. Clearly, the character had been dumbed down by a scriptwriter who assumed these were qualities young girls wanted to idolise. I lost count of the number of times people commented that Nancy had 'spunk' when all she really had was arrogance. And what was with the multi-million dollar bank account she clearly had access to (her car was not exactly what you'd see the average teen driving around) when what made Nancy so interesting was the fact she was a normal 'every' girl. Meanwhile, we had two air-headed bimbos in the form of Bess and George. Heath Freeman was completely miscast in the role of Patrick Daly, the detective heading the enquiry into Jesse's incident. He looked all of twenty-five yet we are meant to believe he ranks so high in the police force (if so, they must have ten-year-olds recruited as uniformed officers).This film wasn't 'Nancy Drew of the twenty-first century', it was 'Nancy Drew, dumbed down' and it failed miserably as an adaptation. Hollywood scriptwriters need to go back to studying how to adapt young female characters and learn that there is no need to sex them up purely to appeal to kids as the original, more understated qualities of the characters in the novels were what made them so appealing in the first place. Those who want a more intelligent investigative film aimed at younger viewers should check out 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' or 'From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler' instead.

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.

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.