Uptown Girls might sound like it’s about a Billy Joel song, but in fact his song “Uptown Girl” doesn’t even feature in the soundtrack at all. (Thankfully, neither does the Westlife version.) Actually this isn’t a film about a rich girl and a poor boy falling in love, though there is a side-story along those lines – instead, this is a story about two very different girls brought up with lots of money.
First of all we have Molly (Brittany Murphy). She is the daughter of a rock legend, has never worked a day in her life, and is the very personification of superficiality. She chases men and then runs away from them bemoaning how undesirable she is, worries about looking hideous (yeah, right), and has as a pet a small pig that they were going to feed her in Thailand once. She has few real friends and the ones she has are mostly strange people. She lives off the trust fund her father left behind, but unfortunately for her this is managed by someone who turns out not to be very trustworthy. Because of this she will have to do something awful – she will actually have to go and get a job. (The Horror…). Molly is 22 (well, actually 23 but she’s lied about her age for quite a while since the boys in school liked the younger girls more!), but you’d often be forgiven for thinking she had the mind of someone half that age. She wears some very odd clothes at times.
On the other hand we have Lorraine. This little 8 year-old is a very strange creature, but this is also from her disturbed family situation. She likes ballet, must have everything ordered exactly as she likes it, and has more than a touch of hypochondria and possibly OCD about her. She goes through nannies likes most people go through toilet paper, and her mother is always “too busy” to spend any time with her. As for her father… well, you’ll have to watch it yourself, it would be too much of a spoiler for me to tell you much about him. Lorraine is 8 but sometimes you’d be forgiven for thinking that she was a lot older. For some reason she likes to be called “Ray”.
Question time, folks:
- What job is Molly going to end up with?
- Who’s going to be Lorraine’s next nanny?
The inevitable happens and Molly ends up with the job from hell, while Lorraine has the nanny from hell. Over time they do develop some sort of strange friendship, and eventually strike a deal – Lorraine will teach Molly how to behave like an adult, while Molly will teach Lorraine how to have fun. There’s a love interest going on in the background (for Molly, of course) and a few broken friendships along the way, and some family reconciliation to be had here and there.
A plot like that could so easily have turned into an awful film but thankfully Director Boaz Yakin knew exactly what he was doing with this one. Murphy gives probably her best performance as a leading actress here and her character, while dumb, was likeable enough because she did have a heart. Dakota Fanning was scarily realistic as the child you are glad is someone else’s, and the chemistry between the two was pretty good. Their not liking each other to begin with was certainly believable enough, and the later scenes were interestingly shot, emotional but not in the least bit slushy. There is a good balance of humour and seriousness throughout, and a good soundtrack despite the lack of Billy Joel’s song. The supporting cast were good with Marley Shelton as Molly’s long suffering best friend, Donald Faison as another long suffering but somewhat odd friend of Molly’s, Jesse Spencer as a young musician who Molly takes a shine to, and Heather Locklear as Lorraine’s mother.
The main problem it suffers from is predictability, which isn’t really surprising considering the basic premise. It is quite a feel-good movie so that helps to compensate for the predictability. There are quite a few genuinely funny moments, and some quite touching ones too. On the whole this probably is a movie that women would be more likely to enjoy, but really there’s no reason why men who don’t need lots of action and violence to keep them occupied wouldn’t enjoy this too. (Just don’t call it a “chick flick”!!) I’m kind of a modern fairy tale with a very slightly cynical streak.
Other Information
Rating – 12A (UK) / PG-13 (USA) for some sexual content and language – really, there’s not a lot of language and the sexual content is more suggested than anything.
Runtime: 92 minutes
Links
For Brittany Murphy fans, this is much, much, much, much, much better than the awful Just Married
Though I wouldn’t really define it as a romantic comedy as such, it does have a touch of romantic comedy in it.
Another modern fairytale you might enjoy is Mannequin starring Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattral, and an eeeeeeeeeeeeeevil James Spader.
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