(2004)
2
Derek Armstrong
First Daughter falls into a distinct teen subgenre from the early 21st century, featuring girls who a) are princesses, b) suddenly discover they are princesses, c) fall in love with a prince, or d) fall in love with a guy who's pretending he's not a prince. Usually, these movies star a pop singer/actress hybrid, or at least someone with whom young girls identify. Maybe that's why First Daughter barely registered with its target audience. Katie Holmes was young enough, but her film career had been devoted to horrors, indies, and ensemble pieces, with Dawson's Creek providing little further recognition among contemporary preteens. But genre poster child Mandy Moore had already done the similarly themed Chasing Liberty, so the role went to Holmes, and the film's nine-million-dollar gross confirmed her underwhelming track record at the box office. Still, other than being too precious by half, the film is not half bad, drawing inspiration from the security-suffocated college experience of Chelsea Clinton, but setting it within a realm of unspoken post-9/11 wariness. The umpteenth actor to play a U.S. president, Michael Keaton wears the exhausted expression of a man who's dealt with enough harrowing threats that it's eroded his former idealism, rendering him not a saint, but a flawed leader who gets picketed on campus. Director Forest Whitaker keeps things simple, but does elevate his role above the basic competence minimally required by the movie. He has a fondness for cutting on form, ending a scene on one location and pulling back out on another. However, the use of a fairy-tale/storybook framing device, which Whitaker himself narrates, reminds viewers that this is nothing more serious than throwaway adolescent entertainment.
First Daughter on AllMovie
First Daughter (2004)
