'What a Girl' is not the royal hit that Bynes would want

Friday, April 4, 2003

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC

The so-so teen comedy "What a Girl Wants" is out to duplicate the box-office success of "The Princess Diaries" and turn Nickelodeon TV personality Amanda Bynes ("All That") into a movie star. Unfortunately, it's likely to fail in both ambitions.

MOVIE REVIEW

WHAT A GIRL WANTS

DIRECTOR: Dennie Gordon

CAST: Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth, Kelly Preston

RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes

RATING: PG for mild language

WHERE: Bella Bottega, Cinema 17, Crossroads, East Valley, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Kirkland Parkplace, Majestic Bay, Marysville 14, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza 12, South Hill Mall, Woodinville 12.

GRADE: C+

Bynes has a definite appeal, her supporting cast (Kelly Preston, Jonathan Pryce and especially Colin Firth, who gives a genuine performance as her long-absent father) is strong and the movie musters a moment or two of fairy-tale charm.

But it's mostly forced and predictable, too much of the physical comedy falls very flat and director Dennie Gordon ("The Adventures of Joe Dirt") doesn't have the kind of masterful touch that might whip the sit-com proceedings into something special.

It's the story of a 17-year-old girl (Bynes) raised in New York's Chinatown by her hippie musician mother (Preston) without ever having met her father (Firth), an English lord who is now on the cusp of being elected prime minister and doesn't even know she exists.

When, one day, she goes to London and declares herself to him, he takes her in, but it's all culture-clash goofiness from there on as she butts heads with British society and the snobbish baddie (Pryce) who ruined her parents' marriage in the first place.

As she foils the villain, falls in love with a nice English boy (Oliver James) and straightens out all of Dad's problems, Bynes' expressive eyes and sharp comic timing are sporadically winning, but she always seems somewhat dwarfed by the dimensions of the big screen.