Ghost Dog. Way of The President's Daughter?
When you look at the repertoire of Forest Whitaker's roles, compared
side-to-side with his directorial portfolio you have to wonder how in the
hell someone involved with films like Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai and
Platoon could also be responsible for that crappy Sandra Bullock film Hope
Floats and the dismal Waiting to Exhale. In fact, when I was presented with
an opportunity to see First Daughter, knowing Whitaker's past directorial
odors, it's safe to say that I was more than a little weary. And frankly, as
the end credits started to roll I realized that I should have stayed in bed.
Whitaker's star - Katie Holmes - was apparently weary about performing in
this film because 1. it shared the exact same premise as the Mandy Moore
film Chasing Liberty, which forced the original release date to be pushed
back and 2. because she didn't want this to be 'just another forgettable
Mandy Moore film' - which early drafts of the script pointed to. So,
Whitaker and his writers were posed with the problem of coming up with a
story that was fresh and different - a take on life in the shadow of the
White House that wasn't just some flimsy and poor excuse of a film geared at
tugging our heartstrings. From what I understand, having avoided Chasing
Liberty like a syphilis ridden whore, First Daughter shares the same kind of
itch.
In First Daughter we're introduced to Samantha MacKenzie (Katie Holmes), a
young girl who is setting off for college in hopes of a normal life - but
unfortunately for Sam her father is the President of the United States of
America (Micheal Keaton). To make matters worse, its election year, and the
shroud of a post 9/11 society makes Sam a liable terrorist target. Life isn't
all wine and cheese for the First Daughter as Sam learns the meaning of
family, freedom and following her dreams throughout this unmotivated and
bland film.
Is First Daughter all bad and fit for the bin then? No, in fact Whitaker
does some good things with the film, and the story shows some moments of Zen
between the drab and almost pre-programmed dialogue that's spouted off. The
film opens with clever editing (Richard Chew) as Whitaker's voice narrates
our heroin's lifetime throughout the opening credits. In fact, based on the
opening - for a brief moment - I thought First Daughter was going to shed
the typecast lineaments of the coming-of-age story, but it soon fell into
that same pattern we've all witnessed a hundred times before in a hundred
different films of the same caliber.
There are few saving graces in the story, but they do exist - particularly
when Sam deals with her father's overprotective nature, and being followed
around by secret service men, as well as a rabid group of paparazzi
shadowing her every move in the hopes of concocting more lies. unfortunately
for First Daughter, these moments of inspiration come too few and far
between to keep anyone's interest throughout. First Daughter has its moments
of inspiration, however its lack thereof causes the film to be heaped in
with all the other She's All That's and Chasing Liberty's out there.
© Chris McGeachy September 25, 2004
http://www.dvdork.com
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