What a Girl Wants * (2003, Colin Firth, Amanda Bynes, Oliver James, Kelly Preston, Eileen Atkins, Anna Chancellor, Jonathan Pryce, Sylvia Syms) – Classic Movie Review 4510

Amanda Bynes stars as US teen Daphne who falls for young Brit hunk Ian (Oliver James) when she comes to England to find her long-lost dad, wealthy British politician lord Henry Dashwood (Colin Firth).

He does not know he had a daughter with an American girlfriend he met 18 years earlier when working in Morocco, a woman his aristocratic family disliked. Dashwood is running for office and Daphne realises her arrival could cause a scandal and cost him the election.

Director Dennie Gordon’s British 2003 film is an outmoded, low-charm romantic comedy packed with cringe-making stereotypes and clichés. However, it is slightly redeemed by Firth’s brisk and entirely adequate performance and Eileen Atkins’s funny one as his witty dowager mother, Jocelyn Dashwood.

Bynes is quite irritating, and never makes us care what this selfish little girl wants, and other performances are equally unappealing.

The script by Jenny Bicks and Elizabeth Chandler is based on the film, play and screenplay of the 1958 movie The Reluctant Debutante, written by William Douglas-Home. But this 2003 film comes over like an American tourist’s view of London and the English.

Also in the film are Kelly Preston, Anna Chancellor, Jonathan Pryce, Christina Cole, Sylvia Syms, Soleil McGhee, Peter Reeves, James Greene and Steven Osborne.

James was the only actor to kiss Bynes in his screen test for the role. He plays guitar and drums in the film and his own songs appear on the soundtrack.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4510

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James was the only actor to kiss Bynes.

Colin Firth in 1984.