Nancy Drew: Anything but clueless : Netglimse.com News

Nancy Drew: Anything but clueless

The new Nancy Drew, in theaters Friday, is trying to crack The Mystery of the 77-Year-Old Teenager.

From the day her novels made their debut in 1930, the girl sleuth has been the very model of manners and propriety, possessing a daggerlike intellect and whatever convenient expertise she needs to pick up clues and find the stolen jewels, lost will or dastardly kidnappers.

Almost eight decades later, know-it-alls have long since fallen out of fashion, underachievers are proud of it, and political pundits use the word "elite" like a slur. In an era of damaged protagonists, Nancy Drew is the ultimate anachronism. So how does the movie update her?

It doesn't — and neither do current books and video games. The film, starring Emma Roberts, attempts to make Nancy's retro-ness rock by contrasting her sincerity against the gum-snapping dullards of the celebutante age.

"I liked how square she is," says director and co-writer Andrew Fleming, whose films include The Craft and the teen-Watergate spoof Dick.

The movie makes her boy-crazy, superficial friends into the joke.

"Nancy Drew is on it. She's focused. She's alpha," Fleming says. "She's what we — or I — aspire to be. She gets the job done and keeps her moral compass at all times."

A hallmark of Nancy Drew is her perfectionism. In the books, she speaks fluently whatever language she needs at the time. She is not only perpetually equipped with a flashlight but also is a certified scuba diver when necessary.

In the film, dangling from a church roof, she doesn't need rescuing; she has a rock-climbing hook and some rope to lower herself, of course.

That could quickly become annoying in a character, so filmmakers decided to poke fun at her obsessive tendencies. "We make a joke about it, but it really is about sincerity," Fleming says. "Self-destructive characters are always being romanticized, but you can be a well-behaved, intelligent, independent person and be happy. We could have said, 'Let's sex her up,' and people might have gone along with that. But that's not what's interesting."

Though Roberts is 16, the PG-rated movie aims at a younger audience — probably not older than 13. That's the same age as Nancy Drew's readers, says Ellen Krieger of Aladdin Books, home of the character's current Girl Detective series.

The publisher tried to reach an audience of older teens and twentysomethings several years ago, where Nancy Drew was a college co-ed solving edgier cases: "But that did not last," Krieger says.

Since then, they have updated the character only slightly. Instead of a blue roadster, for instance, she now drives a hybrid.

Like the movie, current Nancy Drew books accept her flawlessness as a given but use it for the occasional laugh. If she has a weakness, it's that she's too good.

"We give her some foibles now," Krieger says, "because it annoyed me when I was young and reading the books that she never did anything wrong. Now she tends to get distracted working on a case and lose track of time."

To capitalize on the film, Aladdin is publishing movie-themed Nancy Drew novels: Murder on the Set, a Girl Detective book for kids 8-12, and Lights, Camera … Cats!, in the Clue Crew series for readers 6-9.

The character also has become a video-game mainstay. Her 16th computer title, Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, arrives this week with the heroine investigating accidents in the Canadian Rockies.

With the Nancy Drew renaissance already underway, look for her male counterparts — The Hardy Boys — to make their own comeback. Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller are developing a film about the characters in adulthood, and that is likely to lead to spinoff books and video games, Krieger says.

But for now, girl power is the focus.

Jennifer Fisher, 33, who runs NancyDrewSleuth.com and is president of the fan club, says she's glad the movie, books and video games value the character's old-fashioned traits.

Fisher was an adviser on the film and says the movie version of Nancy as comical overachiever is far preferable to making her a gritty action fighter, sassy airhead or angst-ridden brooder.

"I don't think fans would have approved of that," says Fisher, whose own book, Clues for Real Life: The Wit and Wisdom of Nancy Drew, comes out in November. "Nancy Drew is kind and sweet and polite. She's not worried about what other kids are thinking. She's not Paris Hilton."