FilmBlather.com

At every step of the way, Uptown Girls is false, rank and intolerable. It is populated with unlikable characters saying and doing irritating things, making "discoveries" about themselves, participating in scenes that would only happen in a desperate and cynical movie. Nobody behind its production cared a shred about how real people might behave or respond to certain situations. Nobody cared if the audience was able to call out the next plot development minutes before it occured. The worst films are often just plain stupid; it's rare to find one so artificial and obvious. Eew.

Yes, this is another of those movies in which a kid teaches an adult how to live, with the added twist that a) vice-versa, and b) the adult needs to learn not just how to live, but how to grow up. It's ironic like that, see. Brittany Murphy, the bubbly star of such films as Just Married and Summer Catch (though, to be fair, she also has 8 Mile on her resume), plays Molly Gunn, a Manhattan twenty-something living blithely off her famous rocker father's inheritance. When one of her legal staff takes the money and runs, she and her pet pig are evicted from their spacious apartment and forced to move in with Molly's snobby friend (Marley Shelton).

That solves the shelter dilemma, but still leaves the problem of the rent, which means that Molly must -- *shudder* -- get a job. When a position at an extremely upscale clothing store ends in disaster, she decides to become a nanny for the daughter of a busy record producer (Heather Locklear). Cue Ray Schleine (Dakota Fanning), an ultra-precocious nine year-old girl who says things like "Neeeeews-flaaaash: You're. Working. For. Me." to inform us that she can come up with one-liners as well as any third-rate screenwriter.

The script's trajectory is predictable from there on out. There was clearly no time to make this watchable as there are too many life lessons for the characters to learn. The film's biggest achievement is maybe being the first time I had the urge to physically abuse a character under the age of 10; in fact, Uptown Girls may serve as ammo for dedicated misogynists, as there is not a single tolerable male character to be found. The males are not much better; the main love interest, a bland rocker named Neal Fox, just has mood swings at the request of the plot, though his music video is perhaps the only genuine moment in the movie.

Dakota Fanning is a good little actress, delivering her dialogue with flair and conviction, but dear Lord, what dialogue. The script actually forces her to put on sunglasses before delivering the latest cringe-worthy one-liner and when, towards the end of the film, she is supposed to become less insufferable, well... she doesn't really become much less insufferable. Fanning is miles ahead of Brittany Murphy, however, who is so bubbly that the temptation to douse her with cold water is overcome only by the fact that she is in the movie screen.

You gotta love that final scene though, which kills at least two birds with one projectile; two reconciliations are accomplished in one fell swoop, and we still get the latecomer-in-the-auditorium moment to fawn over. Talk about narrative economy. By then, of course, we have been so bludgeoned with infuriatingly obvious plot developments -- Molly and Ray talk of going on the teacup ride together, Ray gets upset and runs away from home, where could she be? Why, alone on the teacups, of course -- that we are actually grateful to see a scene as pointlessly rushed as the climax just so we can get the hell out of there.

I could swear that the people involved with this movie bore some sort of personal grudge against me and worked it out in the ninety-plus minute running time. Think of the most grating, shallow, vapid movie imaginable, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what Uptown Girls really is: a collection of clichŽs and test screening results, put together in no particular order.