Film: 
DVD: 
Written by Julia Dahl, Mo Ogrodnik, and Lisa Davidowitz, based on a story by Allison Jacobs
Directed by Boaz Yakin
Starring Brittany Murphy, Dakota Fanning, Marley Shelton, Donald Faison, Jesse Spencer, Austin Pendleton, and Heather Locklear
Features:
- Deleted Scenes
- “The Lowdown of Uptown” Featurette
- “Rockin’ Style” Featurette
- Video Stills Gallery
- “Time” Music Video with Chantal Kreviazuk
Released by: MGM Home Video
Rating: /b> PG-13
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes
My Advice: Rent it.
Molly (Murphy) has lived a very free lifestyle and she has never seen a party she didn’t like. There’s only one problem–she just ran out of money. Enter Roma (Locklear). She needs a nanny for her daughter, Ray (Fanning). Since Ray has been basically raised by an ever growing list of nannies, she’s very mature for her age. And, since Molly has essentially never had to grow up, she’s definitely lacking in maturity. The two will help each other find out that there’s more to life than what they know.
Well, this is not the best movie ever made. Murphy is playing a role that almost any actress her age could play blindfolded, and she’s having to overcome the “cute” factor of Fanning. The story follows a very popular formula in Hollywood, where the two people who have a huge gap between them grow together only to have their new found friendship put to the test and survive even stronger than before. Really, there’s nothing new about this one at all. They don’t even try to disguise the formula from you. There are no outstanding performances, although I have point out how odd it was that Heather Locklear was playing the role of the mother in this movie. Maybe it’s just me, but she still looks too good to be playing someone’s mother in a movie.
The DVD has some pretty weird special features on it. It’s like it tried to shoot for a demographic of living human beings between the ages of four and eighty-four. Kinda hard to pull off, as you might expect. First of all, there are two featurettes that really don’t give you any idea of what to expect from the movie whatsoever. Okay, let me be fair, the first, “The Lowdown on Uptown,” does talk about the movie a little bit, but only in the sense that it gives the cast and crew the opportunity to talk about how working on this movie changed their lives forever and that everyone who worked on it are the most creative people the world has ever known. The usual crap.
The other featurette is a little better than the first. It’s called “Rockin’ Style” and it focuses on the costume design for the movie. This featurette could have been better if the designer had attempted to create some kind of personality for the filming of it. No real surprises from the deleted scenes either. Had they not been cut, the movie would have been just as bad only longer. There is also one of those odd video slideshow of some behind-the-scenes stills. It doesn’t last long enough to be worth anything and some of the pictures don’t stay on the screen long enough to be seen.
Rent this one. It’s just not worth shelling out the dough to add it to your collection.
