The Woman in the Road

Nancy Drew (2007)
directed by Andrew Fleming
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

At some point, this project must have looked pretty good on paper. A teenager moves to a house in Los Angeles where an actress was murdered years ago. Among the clues the sleuth finds is a bathrobe monogrammed with crossed palm trees from a resort outside the city. A chase leads the girl through the wilderness of Griffith Park; she emerges near the observatory while the sun sits low in the sky.

Well, you know how it goes. But the city is never less than 6:00 pm beautiful, Emma Roberts acquits herself well of the line between old-fashioned and behind the times, and if Nancy Drew had made money at the box office, this might have been a great little series about the Los Angeles we all know and love. As it is, the mystery is simply too conventional and the subplot of Nancy finding her place at Hollywood High feels shoehorned in to take up time. Which it is. But at 99 minutes (including picture credits), it doesn't take much, which you can bet is more than I'll be saying for the director's cut of The Wolfman.