806. What A Girl Wants (2003)

Starring: Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth, Kelly Preston

Director: Dennie Gordon

Running Time: 103 mins

What A Girl Wants is an American film about a 17-year-old American girl who travels to London to meet her estranged father, who she then realises is a candidate in the upcoming general election, and then realises that her involvement could ruin everything for him.

All that I could do during this film was sigh. It’s another tediously generic teen rom-com, Amanda Bynes and a lot of the other actors are frustratingly irritating, the romance in this film is actually totally unnecessary, and, being British, the stereotypes really (and I mean REALLY) annoyed me.

In fact, let’s start with that very issue, the stereotypical portrayal of Britain. Now, I don’t mind having our country and culture having the mick taken out of it, and we do it to America just as much. However, when every single person in a film except two is an upper-class snob, and there’s no sign of anybody else, that annoys me.

There’s a lot of stuff about the British being emotionally repressed and stuck-up, which I can accept (to a degree), however when you have such a fake portrayal of a country as aristocratic toffs, it’s not pleasant to watch, especially when it includes lines such as: ‘Leave her alone. She’s mine, peasant!’.

You know how offensive The Interview was to North Korea? Well, this had a similar effect on me. Not even assassinating The Queen in The Naked Gun was as annoying as this!

Of course, I’m exaggerating a bit, and I’m sure that if you like the story and the comedy in this film, then you can bypass the stereotypes perfectly easily.

However, I hated the story and the comedy in this film. In terms of the plot, it’s just totally implausible. Every character is an idiot and hugely impulsive, it feels like a poor recreation of a rubbish fairytale, there is so much unnecessary romantic cheese here, and the romance that does pop up has next to no relevance in the story.

The comedy wasn’t much better. In fact, it was worse. I laughed about twice in this film, and they were at silly slapstick jokes. The rest of it was depressingly unfunny, with so much more focus on its convoluted and unbelievable story and its pointless romance, which bored me to death, so that’s why this gets a 4.1 from me.