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So we watched Nancy Drew last night. We did this for a number of reasons, including our fondness for genre pictures including both kids' movies and mysteries, my appreciation in youth of the pint-sized case-solver, and a fair number of good reviews.
But I have to say to the reviewers: I'm sorry, but retro styling and a young woman unwilling to compromise to fit in does not a good movie make. Better than Bratz? I certainly imagine so. But good? No.
Screenwriting lessons learned (or reinforced, if already understood)...
1) A "Mary Sue" character is written as the embodiment of perfection. She knows the answers to the universe and doles them out to everyone around her. Her face is flawless, her morality is flawless, her intelligence is flawless. She can perform an emergency tracheotomy even at age 16. She has near-super powers of strength. She is completely uninteresting.
2) The only thing worse than writing a Mary Sue is surrounding her with flat characters who fawn over her, and flat villains who dismiss her. I would say that about 95% of the other actors in the movie spend the whole time saying things like "wow, you're right." "You should write a book about that." "I don't know what we'd do without you." It doesn't make the Mary Sue seem any more brilliant, it just makes every other person in the film seem lifeless. And what joy is there in overcoming a villain who topples like a house of cards, 2D and without any strength whatsoever? Even Bruce Willis, in a cameo as himself, has only one thing to say in the film, and that is to tell Nancy that he thinks she should take over directing the movie she stumbles into.
3) If you're going to build your movie around a Mary Sue, and surround her with cardboard characters, don't then undermine her character with flawed information that is accepted by everyone around her. I don't mean flawed information as in "one can investigate 20 people with the same name on different sides of Los Angeles in one day," I mean "one saves someone from choking by doing CPR." In order to set up a flimsy plot point, the snotty 2D mean-girls overhear Nancy saying she knows CPR, so they set her up, making a sidekick pretend to choke so she'll have to perform mouth-to-mouth. Apparently neither Nancy, the villains, or the rest of the basketball stadium knows about the Heimlich. This is not a very big problem to correct; instead of "knows CPR" all they had to write was "knows emergency medical training... CPR... Heimlich... you name it, I can do it!" This would be preferable to teaching scads of untrained kids that one is supposed to push on a choking person's heart.
And, it generally seemed that ALL of their screenwriting mistakes could be easily swapped out with some intelligent script-doctoring. It's not that hard. Or, apparently, it is. But it certainly makes me ever more fervent to finish this slew of screenplays partly-completed, because I really, really believe that aiming for "better than Bratz" just isn't high enough, isn't respectful of your audience - who, believe it or not, are pretty smart - and isn't going to make you as much money as a movie that is appealing AND smart AND avoids condescending to its characters or its audience.
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