One good thing comes from watching utter dreck like First Daughter–it reaffirms by belief that hey, maybe even I could write a film better than this piece of crap. And then I get depressed because this piece of crap actually got made.
Katie Holmes is supposed to be the President’s college-bound daughter, a part for which she seems too old. (I had the exact opposite objection to her portrayal of Bruce Wayne’s assistant D.A. girlfriend in Batman Begins, for which she seemed completely miscast and out-acted.) The acting in First Daughter is universally awful, except for Michael Keaton as the President, who doesn’t so much as act as sleep walk his way through the part. I found it fairly distasteful the way the First Parents use their daughter for political gain and are never called on it. And was it just me, or was there a creepy incestuous tone to the relationship between first father and daughter.
Perhaps I was just trying to construct a more interesting subtext to what is a pretty generic movie. Plot developments from start to finish are phony and contrived. Characters are pushed around from scene to scene by very obvious script machinations. Most damaging of all, First Daughter is completely devoid of any fairy tale magic. [* out of 5]
2 Things @ Once 