Anybody remember the character Encyclopedia Brown? Yes, no, maybe? Well, for those unfortunate folks unaware of him, Encyclopedia Brown was the star of an eponymous series of collections of mystery stories geared toward younger readers. I remember reading them with my father back in the halcyon days of yore, and I remember hardly ever remember solving the mysteries on my own. I vaguely remember some occasional moon logic, but it often came down to my not knowing certain facts (for example, there’s this one story revolving around a cavalry saber purported to have dated back to the Civil War, but our boy EB debunks the claim due to dating discrepancies: it talks about the “First” Battle of Bull Run before the second battle at Manassas had taken place, something I would certainly not have caught on to when I was, like, four years old), not to mention my being pretty damn stupid then. (Ha! “Then.” Right.) What gets me about the Encyclopedia Brown books is how they’ve thus far escaped adaptation to the variously-sized screens. Sure, there were a handful of episodes of an HBO series from back in the late 80s and early 90s, but from what I can gather the series wasn’t very popular at the time, and it’s insanely unknown these days. Aside from that, we haven’t gotten an on-going series or any sort of film adaptation over the years. As odd as that is, you’d think a more popular and beloved book series of similar subject matter would fare better, right?
Well, in the case of Nancy Drew, you’d be pretty starkly wrong. The young sleuthy girl remains well-celebrated to this day, something I’ve come to learn from asking around the office and my friend groups. But as popular as the books have been, the films have almost uniformly flopped, whether you’re talking about the quartet of films in the late 30s or the attempted reboot in 2007. Warner Brothers’ll be damned, though, if they’re gonna let a potentially lucrative franchise just sit on the shelves without a fight. Enter Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase.
As you might’ve gleaned from the above, I’m not all that familiar with the Nancy Drew series, both the books and the films, so I can’t speak to the authenticity of the character’s portrayal here. Feel free to lemme know how off/on it is, kids! For this franchise relaunch (yup, there’s sequel-baiting at the end, so it’s clear WB wants to keep the ball rolling, especially if things go particularly well), the young Ms. Drew is something of a teenage rebel type, big into her skateboard and fighting injustice in her social system. For instance, the film begins with Nancy helping a friend of hers, the victim of some cyber-bullying, get some revenge on the offending jock bully (which she does by dyeing his skin Smurf-blue (no, this isn’t Big Fat Liar, but good on ya for catching the comparison to that piece of trash) and targeting him in a similar online situation he himself had inflicted on the girl before). This lands her some major community service (holy shit, consequences for precocious acts of teenagers!?!?), which is quickly brushed aside when something of a haunted house mystery lands in her lap. Teenage detective shenanigans ensue.
The film’s biggest draw is lead Sophia Lillis (who impressed me a couple years ago with her performance in It). She brings just the right amount of snark, ability, and teenage awkwardness/naïveté to make Nancy Drew into an actual living person, rather than a character being portrayed. Unfortunately, most of her supporting cast is middling at best, and the material they have to work with is definitely nothing to write home about (hell, it’s barely worthy of a second-thought text). What could have been at least a solid puzzle is telegraphed from miles away, and the energies Nancy and her companions expend to solve everything hardly amount to mild strains. Combine this shallowness with an overarching lack of visual interest (this thing looks more like a modern made-for-TV movie than something you’d find in theatres), and you’re left only with the impression that this film is pure fluff, nothing more. It’s better than other fluffy offerings I’ve seen lately (man, 2019 has been cinematically weak thus far!), but there’s nothing to recommend it beyond background noise while you do something just as hardly-taxing as the mystery at the heart of the plot.
Allusions of Grandeur 