Super Sleuth

As a child, some of the best presents my grandmother gave me were hard, yellow, exciting, and devoured in an afternoon. The finding of forgotten stores during a spree of spring cleaning would land a well-used stack of them into my eager young hands. I would go missing for days at a time, tucked up under the blankets of my bed with a stash of soda crackers for sustanence and my stuffed raccoon for company. Nancy Drew and her adventures had a lasting effect on my little self, in that they cultured my current love of reading, and pointed me towards what is now my current career: a crime solver extraordinaire. While Nancy may not have had much in the way of complexity, the titian-haired (I tried for years when I was young to figure out what colour titian was) girl detective and her companions Betty and George held my attention with their daring and dangerous escapades.

Today I’m a little older. A couple of decades older in fact, but there are some things from childhood that have the ability to stir up some excitment even now.

Warner Brothers recently announced that it would be bringing Nancy & Co. back to the big screen in a modern day adaptation of Carolyn Keene’s novels. To star as the teen queen of investigation, casting directors have scored Julia Roberts’ neice Emma who, as you may, or may not recall, made an appearance in the 2001 film Blow. Though no official movie website exists yet, a brief sniff of the plot has been offered, revealing that a movie star murder in Hollywood calls for the skill and determination of the Drew Crew.

I have some serious reservations about bringing Nancy into 2005 and hope that the creative minds behind this one stay true to characters that have been idolized for generations. It’s a little too early to be getting my hackles up over adaptation issues, so I’ll continue to watch for updates on this one with great interest, and remain optimistic about the outcome.