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Tinseltown girl in distress finds happy ending

Brittany Murphy, right, is a Hollywood princess taking charge of a budding Tinseltown star played by Dakota Fanning. PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX MOVIES

Uptown Girls is the latest rhinestone-crusted fantasy in the booming Junior Miss niche market that might be called Princess because of its fawning adoration of overprivileged young bachelorettes and the luxuries their credit cards can fetch. Its bratty 22-year-old heroine, Molly (Brittany Murphy), is the orphaned daughter of rock royalty (her parents died in a plane crash), who lives in Manhattan in palatial squalor with her pet pig, Moo, and her dead father's guitar collection.

Molly is a font of consumer tips that might possibly be of use to other post-teen babes of leisure with nothing better to do than shop, go to nightclubs and fret over which handsome young man to take to bed. She insists, for instance, that sheets made of Egyptian cotton with a thread count of 900 (a set costs more than US$1,300) are an irresistible lure to lovemaking once a man has felt their texture.

Sure enough, one touch of that cotton is enough to melt the resolve of Neal (Jesse Spencer), the cute Australian rock 'n' roller Molly meets at her ultra-glam surprise 22nd birthday party. Neal, who is in recovery from alcoholism, has also sworn to be celibate. But you know how it is with high thread counts and princesses accustomed to getting what they want. Those sheets end up making such a deep impression on Neal that he celebrates them in an original song.

Film Notes: Uptown Girls Directed by: Boaz Yakin Starring: Brittany Murphy (Molly Gunn), Dakota Fanning (Ray Schleine), Marley Shelton (Ingrid), Donald Faison (Huey), Jesse Spencer (Neal) and Heather Locklear (Roma Schleine) Running time: 105 minutes Taiwan Release: today

In this standard variation of the princess myth, it takes a humbling fall from grace for Molly to gain a smidgen of soul and a glimpse of happily ever after. Once her obnoxiousness has been camouflaged by a thick glaze of saccharine, things magically work out, as they usually do for Hollywood princesses in distress.

Molly's ordeal begins when she is informed that her business manager has disappeared with US$100 million of his clients' money, and she is in debt and facing eviction. She camps out with friends but proves to be an impossible roommate and ends up taking a job as a nanny to Ray (Dakota Fanning), a prim eight-year-old princess-in-waiting and raving hypochondriac who presides like a stern little general over her own Manhattan palace at Fifth Avenue and 81st Street.

Ray, who is as precise and orderly as Molly is slovenly, is also an orphan of sorts. Her icy mother, Roma (Heather Locklear), is far too busy pursuing a high-powered career in the music business (and the sexual opportunities it offers) to give Ray the time of day. Ray's father, who suffered a stroke, lies in a vegetative state attended by nurses.

Uptown Girls evokes a post-Sex and the City world of spoiled, shallow predators with little of the charm or humor of Carrie Bradshaw and her crew. The movie, directed by Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans), also owes a big debt to the British comedy series Absolutely Fabulous, which pits a precociously mature child (Ray listens to Mozart, studies ballet and talks in the meticulous cadences of a prep school head mistress) against a selfish hedonist who can't pick up after herself.

Ultimately Molly learns to care for others and helps Ray discover the weepy inner child hidden behind the pseudo-adult scold.

Murphy is more convincing as an acquisitive young princess than as the reformed, responsible Woman Who Cares she eventually becomes. The actress simply lacks the innate likability factor that makes you root for Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon, even when their characters are behaving badly.

Fanning deftly handles the one-note role of the serious little girl who learns to cry.

But the movie, which opens today, is fatally true to the hypocritical values of its niche market. While pretending to teach a lesson in compassion, it wallows in the perks of privilege. Its real message is that beauty, wealth, a shrewd fashion sense, expensive bed clothes and, above all, an ironclad sense of entitlement can help a girl conquer the world. That's all it takes.
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