While every movie has a target audience that it is geared towards, the truly great movies transcend that audience and appeal to a much broader one. What a Girl Wants is not one of those movies. It is aiming for the readers of Teen People Magazine and it successfully hits its target to the exclusion of everyone else. While I did find the movie amusing enough in parts, only someone who has never been to the movies before will be surprised by anything that happens in this one.
Daphne Reynolds (Amanda Bynes) is an All-American girl living in New York City with her bohemian musician mother Libby (Kelly Preston). All Daphne knows about her father is from the story her mother tells her every year on her birthday. Apparently her Father is an English Lord (Colin Firth) who met Daphne's mother in Morocco. They were married in a Bedouin wedding ceremony. Upon their arrival in England Lord Dashwood's choice of a free-spirited American bride is met with displeasure by his family and political advisors and the bride is sent packing back to the states. Only after she is gone, does Libby realize that she is pregnant.
When the story of her parents' meeting is told for the first time, it is so lushly romanticized that I assumed that the truth would turn out to be the exact opposite. I thought the truth would reveal that Libby's relationship with Lord Dashwood was just a quick fling and that the story was only a way for Libby to make Daphne feel good. Sadly, the story is 100% true, and sets the tone for the rest of the picture.
On her eighteenth birthday, Daphne, after seeing one more father-daughter dance than she can take, flies off to England to meet the Father she's never known. At her hotel in London, she meets a young, cute, musician/desk clerk, (who really comes from a rich family, but whose parents gave it all up for love) and before you can say, "Hands across the Pond", young love has blossomed.
Daphne's arrival at her Father's estate causes a stir, not only because he never knew that he was a father, but also because he is currently running for office and doesn't want a scandal so near the election. The stir is aggravated by Lord Dashwood's social-climbing fiancée and her like-minded daughter, who want nothing to do with the crass American girl. Naturally Lord Dashwood's mother, Daphne's grandmother, (played by Julie Andre...I mean Eileen Atkins) takes an immediate shine to the girl, inviting her to stay with them.
Thankfully the cast is all capable and charming, making up partly for the predictability of the plot. Colin Firth plays the stock stiff-upper-lip Englishman that he perfected in Bridget Jones's Diary and Eileen Atkins puts her many years of Masterpiece Theatre acting to good use as the crusty Countess. Amanda Bynes is cute, but a little cloyingly so.
Soon Daphne is mixing with her Father's peers. The British Upper-class, whom it seems have never met an American before or been told to 'loosen up', are soon falling under her spell. That is until her behavior begins to affect her stodgy father's standing in the polls. When she is told to behave more like a proper Lady, Daphne is faced with either being true to herself or possibly losing the Father she has finally been reunited with. (Damn it, I promised myself that I wouldn't cry while writing this review!)
The rest is all too predictable.
