UPTOWN GIRLS

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: sensuality

Rated:

When I saw the previews for Uptown Girls in front of What a Girl Wants, I knew it was going to be an adorable movie. I was disappointed when it got slapped with a PG13 rating. Fortunately the rating is never abused and it's a fun chick flick with some surprisingly deep messages about growing up. Molly Gunn (Brittany Murphy) is the wealthy daughter of a rock star killed in the early eighties. Ever since she's been endowed with the multi-million dollar inheritance, including annual sales percentages from her parents' records. She lives in a Park Avenue penthouse and spends thousands on sheets alone, much less other expensive habits... including being a regular at the local nightclub with her friends Huey (Donald Faison) and Ingrid (Marley Shelton). To celebrate her twenty-second birthday, her friends throw her a party and invite a British pop star hopeful (Jesse Spencer).

While mooning over Neil in the ladies' bathroom, Molly meets eight-year-old Ray (Dakota Fanning). This high-wired, germ-terrified little adult is the daughter of Huey's boss at the record company. She's run off six consecutive nannies in three months and is allowed free rein to behave as badly as she likes. The purse-toting girl takes an immediate dislike to Molly, who has other things to worry about... like how to take Neil home with her. He comes back to the apartment and they share several nice days together before he packs up and leaves... but not before breaking her heart. Depressed and unwilling to even answer her phone, Ingrid finds Molly's apartment a wreck a week later. The electricity, phone, and heating system have been turned off. The guy who takes care of "that stuff," skipped town with the entirety of the Gunn inheritance, along with six other fortunes in the industry. The likelihood of catching him is slender and even if they do run him down, Molly will be on social security before she gets her money back.

There's no choice before her but to get employment, and when her job at a Manhattan store goes badly array, there's only one option left... as a nanny to Ray. You can imagine the chaos which ensues when the two are thrown together. Eventually Molly and Ray become friends, but not until after a lot of arguments, slamming doors, and nose-thumbing. What makes this movie work is the reversed roles. Molly, an adult who behaves like a spoiled little kid, and Ray, the little girl who is almost too grown up for her own good. One who likes greasy hotdogs, the other who listens to Mozart. The pairing is absolutely charming. Brittany is the ideal actress for the role of a carefree girl turned serious, and Dakota is always charming. This little girl is headed for the big leagues. Of course there's also the secondary plot of her mother not paying enough attention to her, but that's a given. There's really nothing new here, but it doesn't matter. It's fun anyway.

Neil and Molly do engage in an intimate relationship but to my surprise, there's no actual sex scenes. He stays in her apartment, they talk and sing together, and trade mild innuendo... and that's it. He does ask for his clothes back, which she is wearing and must take off (we see her bare back). She buys him some sheets and takes them to his apartment, then asks him if it's time for bed yet. She wakes up the next morning in a department store, sleeping on the job. Molly wears some immodest (tight, short, and low-cut) outfits. In a bar scene, a woman licks Huey's neck and then looks as if she might kiss Molly, but doesn't. Two girls are shown briefly dancing together in an early scene. Molly finds Neil in Ray's mother's kitchen, intimating he spent the night with her boss. He's later shown in a music video surrounded by beautiful women in leotards.

There is some language (two abuses of Jesus' name, many minor abuses of deity, and a few profanities). Ray extends the middle finger on two occasions; in the second, Molly grabs her hand and tells her never to do that again. Dragging Ray off another child at school, Molly learns it was because the little girl repeated what her nanny said about Molly (that she was a "slut bag whore"); we then see Molly humorously beating up on the nanny. She falls a few times and tries to kill herself by jumping off a bridge, but the water is only waist deep. What makes Uptown Girls so good is the humor that blends in with equally touching moments of awakening friendship between the girls. Molly grows up a little, and Ray learns to be a little girl again... even if it means taking in Molly's pet pig. The humor is genuinely funny rather than being offensive. Many of the scenes have emotional tension to them and might even provoke a few tears in the audience.

I found it very enjoyable and lighthearted but also thought-provoking. I do have one further comment concerning the DVD. Apparently material that really would have earned a PG13 was scrapped from the theatrical cut, but appears in the "deleted" scenes section of the disk. Three or four of these scenes include sexual content and homosexual gags. Keep clear of them and you're pretty much home free.

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