What a Girl Wants

Despite the random romantic rendezvous between a hippie musician (Kelly Preston) and a clean-cut aristocrat in the Moroccan desert, this formulaic film plays like a cheesy situation comedy with Colin Firth as a British Bob Saget and Amanda Bynes as the sugar-coated Olsen sisters. After this African affair, the two lovers are forced to go their separate ways by their disapproving elitist parents worried about their own sacred social standings and their son’s precious political career. However, 17 years later, a rough-around-the-edges love child (Bynes) tracks down her unsuspecting long-lost family and disrupts their tea and crumpets. The evil step-sister with her prim and proper superiority complex right out of Cinderella is sure to put the American girl in her place, but the all-too- perky teen steals high class hearts with some skeet shooting, a midnight snack of Coco Pops and her plastered on grin. Anyone over the age of 15 will be utterly bored by director Dennie Gordon’s predictable teen flick, while fans who know Bynes from her Nickelodeon TV show will go along for the slow and steady ride to see what it is the girl wants.