journal features

movie review - Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kokubunji, 2021.04.03

This is a story of a girl who's drawn into a ghost story. It all turns out to have a perfectly reasonable explanation. Well, an explanation involving greed, betrayal, casually drugging people without their consent, community service sentences, teen-age friendship drama, trespassing, break & enter, possible police complicity, and teen-age/parent tension. The story was substantially better than I expected and my daughter enjoyed it for "movie night", though it tries to have it both ways in maintaining the 1930s vibe in some respects while having the rest quite updated (e.g. drugging). The main cast of girls works very well together.

It's not genius, but it's entertaining and my almost-nine-year-old enjoyed it. Recommended.

rand()m quote

On the endless saga of Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto; "It shouldn't have had to come to this. I'm so tired of getting up every morning and wondering, 'What will it be today?' I'm so tired of giving the benefit of the doubt again and again, only to be let down again and again.... Somewhere a responsible adult has to appear, draw a bright moral line, tell the truth and say unequivocally what won't be tolerated. Somebody has to do the right thing."

—Denzil Minnan-Wong