Uptown Girls (PG-13)
IMDb; MGM; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Vudu; YouTube
Caution: potential spoilers.
Well, I actually liked this more than I expected to. I mainly wanted to see it because I'm a fan of Dakota Fanning. And, as usual, she's pretty much the best thing in the movie. But everyone was rather good, I thought (or at least okay). It wasn't the greatest movie, but it had its amusing moments, though perhaps not as many as intended. Even when I did find it amusing, it was generally rather mildly so. Mostly I enjoyed the film for its dramatic aspects.
It begins with Molly Gunn (Brittany Murphy), the daughter of a rock star. Both her parents died when she was young, and that hurt her a lot, of course. She's never entirely recovered from it. But for the most part, she's been rather happy. They left her with plenty of money, so she never really thought about such matters. She's always been rather a free spirit, even somewhat flaky. One apparent indication of this is her pet pig, Mu (the name is Thai for "pork"). Though she loves all her stuff, her most prized possession is a collection of her father's guitars. Anyway, the movie begins on her 22nd birthday, and she goes to a club, where a party is thrown for her by her friends Ingrid (Marley Shelton) and Huey (Donald Faison). One of the guests is Huey's record executive boss, Roma Schleine (Heather Locklear). Her 8-year-old daughter Ray (Fanning) is also there, and Huey has to look after her, because the latest in a long line of nannies has just been fired. There's also a singer at the club, Neal, who Huey is trying to get Roma to sign. Molly immediately falls for him. They begin a somewhat odd romantic relationship which has its ups and downs over the course of the film.
Later, Molly finds that her accountant has embezzled millions of dollars from all his clients, and disappeared somewhere. So now she's broke. Ingrid gets her a job, though she's never had one before, and totally flakes and gets fired. Then Huey gets her a job as a nanny for Ray. She is totally different from Molly... Ray is more like an adult, while Molly is more like a kid. Ray's very serious, and somewhat germophobic, and her idea of fun is radically different from Molly's. She likes classical music, takes ballet but hates free form dance, etc. So, naturally, it takes time for the two to bond. However, Ray's father is in a coma, and her mother's never around, so she and Molly both have absent parent issues to deal with.
Anyway, after Molly gets evicted from her apartment, she stays with Ingrid for a while, though she's forced to sell a lot of her beloved stuff, which there isn't room for. And eventually the two have a falling out, and Molly moves in with Huey. Though eventually she gets her own place. And... well, dunno what to say. Ups and downs with Neal, ups and downs with Ray, and with Ingrid, whatever. Um... I dunno, the movie's kinda quirky, but not enough to put it in that category. Welp, the whole thing has its ups and downs, but... it ends on quite a happy note, and it made me cry a bit. So there.