First Daughter Review
by Chris McGeachy (chrismcg AT shaw DOT ca)September 28th, 2004
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
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
