So what does a girl want? Surely it's not anodyne fare like this vehicle for Nickelodeon moppet Amanda Bynes, here cast as an all-American teenager who travels to England to endear herself to the dad she's never known. Roll out the predictable culture-clash high-jinks, as perky Daphne bonds with her stuffy politician father (Colin Firth), much to the consternation of his snooty brood and vile fiancée (Four Weddings' Anna Chancellor, doing her standard `Duckface' routine).
Like The Princess Diaries and The Parent Trap before it, Dennie Gordon's kid-friendly flick panders to its `tweenage' audience with lots of pop-video prancing and soppy sentiment. Not to mention endless montages of Miss Bynes trying on clothes. Ostensibly based on '50s romance The Reluctant Debutante but resembling more an extended episode of some cheesy US sitcom, What A Girl Wants is standard Hollywood guff. It comes complete with a total disregard for London geography and the usual roster of British thesps (Jonathan Pryce, Eileen Atkins) slumming it for the Yankee dollar.
