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MARTY CLEARTake two misunderstood rich kids, throw them together, mix with no originality or wit, and you have Uptown Girls.
Director Boaz Yakin and the writers of Uptown Girls really know how to tug at your heartstrings.
They simply regurgitated key elements from lots of other films: a neglected child, attractive but downtrodden people who triumph over adversity, villainous adults who eventually repent.
The result is a story that feels as if it were written by computers and approved by focus groups.
If you've watched any significant number of movies or TV shows, you'll know exactly what's going to happen next. And not just plot points, either: You'll be able to predict sight gags and dialogue.
The girls in the title are Molly, an ultra-rich 22-year-old orphaned daughter of a rock star, and Ray, a dour and obnoxious 9-year-old. They're thrown together when Molly (Brittany Murphy) loses all her daddy's money to a crooked accountant. Broke and desperate, she takes a job as Ray's nanny, a job that's available because nobody else can stand the horrid brat.
Of course, the fun-loving Molly ends up teaching Ray (Dakota Fanning) how to have fun, and the deadly serious Ray ends up teaching Molly how to be a responsible adult. Ray, it turns out, wasn't a bad kid after all. She was just misunderstood. Imagine that!
Very quickly, Molly and Ray straighten out each other's lives. Once that's accomplished, everyone in Manhattan is overcome with sweetness and light, all the mean people become nice, Molly gets lucrative and exciting work. The words "happily ever after" aren't spoken, but they might as well be.
It's all tried-and-true stuff. Murphy (King of the Hill and 8 Mile) and Fanning (I Am Sam) both do as well as can be expected, though Ray is such an unpleasant child that it's hard to warm up to Fanning's performance.
Yakin, whose last directorial project was the far more substantial Remember the Titans, injects flavor into the story with photography that's richer and more imaginative than the material merits. But he moves the proceedings along at a choppy pace. The relationship between the two "girls" goes from antagonistic to affectionate way too quickly, and the resolution is abrupt.
The target audience is apparently teenage girls, and a lot of them may not have enough film experience to realize they're being served reheated leftovers. They'll enjoy the fairy tale and get caught up in Molly's life of nightclubs and rock stars, and they may even find some of the jokes funny.
For everyone outside that intended demographic, though, there's no reason to go all the way uptown.
Uptown Girls
Grade: C-
Director: Boaz Yakin Writers: Allison Jacobs, Julia Dahl, Mo Ogrodnik, Lisa Davidowitz.
Cast: Brittany Murphy, Dakota Fanning, Marley Shelton, Donald Faison, Heather Locklear.
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and language
Running time: 95 minutes