Release Date: August 15, 2003
Starring: Brittany Murphy, Dakota Fanning, Marley Shelton, Donald Adeosun Faison, Heather Locklear
Directed by: Boaz Yakin
Written by: Julia Dahl, Mo Ogrodnik, Lisa Davidowitz
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (sexual content, language)
What we have in Uptown Girls is a rehash of the same concept used to much better effect in the 1993 comedy Mrs. Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams. It’s the idea that an emotionally and socially immature adult can be brought into maturity by having to look after the needs of a child, who, as is often the case in these pictures, is usually an arrogant, pretentious little snot. But Mrs. Doubtfire was a success because Williams had the dramatic range to make the title character much more than just a character; it’s one of the few screwball comedies that quite possibly qualifies as a character study. In Uptown Girls, Brittany Murphy has the lead, but very little in the way of a lead role. Quite often the scenes and jokes in this movie feel like flimsy cardboard imitations of what Williams was up to 10 years prior.
In this movie, Murphy, who is almost, but not quite as goofy as she looks, plays Molly Gunn, the 22-year-old daughter of the late, great rock star Tommy Gunn. Since her mother and father died in a plane crash when she was eight, Molly has been living off of the royalties of her dad’s hits -- but her luxurious lifestyle of VIP birthday parties and penthouse apartments in Manhattan comes abruptly to an end when she discovers that her father’s accountant has swindled her out of the Tommy Gunn fortune, leaving her relatively destitute and completely penniless.
With no education and no marketable skills, her friend Huey (Donald Adeosun Faison) sets her up with a job as a nanny for his boss’s daughter, the coldhearted, meanspirited, cynical Lorraine -- better known as Ray (Dakota Fanning). The parallels between the eight-year-old Ray and Molly are obvious. Both are living lives of luxury that they have no way of appreciating, mostly because they lack any and all parental influence. But whereas Molly has grown up into a fun-loving, free-spirited 22-year-old, Ray seems to have completely skipped childhood and gone straight to the no-fun likes of a very severe adulthood.
Thus the movie’s back-and-forth, which is obvious from miles away. Molly tries to teach Ray to lighten up and live a life without form and rules, while Ray criticizes Molly’s immaturity (which is, truth be told, quite substantial). In one scene, for example, Molly tunes a radio to a nameless pop hit with a good beat and turns up the volume. “This isn’t even music!” shouts the Mozart-loving Ray, crossing her arms and pouting. “But it sure is fun to dance to,” retorts Molly.
But even though Uptown Girls is adept at pointing out the benefits of a spontaneous, free-spirited life like Molly’s, its fun is dampened by its unbelievable characters. At the beginning of the film, Molly has almost no regard for her own life, which makes the viewer wonder how she ever got to 22 without any sort of adult influence (her apartment is cluttered with, as one character puts it, a week’s worth of leftovers and a month’s worth of laundry). Apparently Molly’s best friend Ingrid (Marley Shelton), who takes responsibility for investigating where Molly’s inheritance has gone, is supposed to account for this, although her rigidly formal character is almost as implausible as Molly’s.
Most incredible of all is Ray, played by the talented Dakota Fanning as a caricature of all of New York’s micromanaged, prep-schooled uptown children. It’s hard to see why Molly even puts up with her, other than for the sake of a job, since initially Molly is not portrayed as a naturally kindhearted person (though she later becomes one when the movie decides it’s more convenient for her to try to brighten Ray’s life). Ray does fit well with the rest of the characters in that none of them are especially likeable; at least in Mrs. Doubtfire, it was at least partially believable that Robin Williams’s character might transform himself into a proper English matron for the sake of spending more time with his children -- on the whole, they were worth it all.
But it’s possible that the screenwriters for Uptown Girls, the threesome of Julia Dahl, Mo Ogrodnik, and Lisa Davidowitz, already know this, because they try to cram much more into the movie than simply the kid-and-adult-teach-each-other-life-lessons plot. Molly also struggles with a romantic relationship with the singer/songwriter Neal (Jesse Spencer), who, too, finds himself inspired by Molly’s freewheeling nature but unable to cope with her immaturity. Here is a romantic subplot that is expectedly underdeveloped and just as hastily resolved, and though it takes up much of the movie’s time -- if only to establish Molly as the brainless society queen she is -- it adds nothing to the story.
There is more than a bit of sentimentality to the movie, which is not unexpected because the director, Boaz Yakin, also did the warmhearted true-story movie Remember the Titans. But that movie had an honesty to it that is completely absent here; instead, the emotions feel as false as Molly’s made-up life. Thankfully, the movie comes to an end after about 100 minutes; at least the viewers don’t have to pretend to care about these characters for too long.
-- Craig Roush (crr225@nyu.edu)