Rather tepid child...

Introduction

Poppy (Emma Roberts) is a spoiled LA girl with lots of money and zero common sense. Still grieving for her dead mother, Poppy delights in trying to show up her dad and his latest beau. As his latest is about to move in, Poppy throws a party, hijacks the removal van as it's unloading possessions and throws most of dad's girlfriend's clothes into the sea.

That's the last straw for dad (Aidan Quinn), who decides to send Poppy to boarding school in England. Unbeknownst to Poppy, the boarding school she ends up at is actually the one that her mother went to but all Poppy wants to do is leave. Head girl Harriet (Georgia King) is one who will gladly try to get one over on Poppy and send her home but isn't trying to help her, rather get one back over her.



Poppy is billeted with a mix of lasses from the home nations in Kate (Kimberley Nixon), Drippy (Juno Temple), Kiki (Sophie Wu) and Josie (Linzey Cocker). Despite grudgingly sleeping in the same room as the girls to start with, Poppy gradually warms to her new companions - but not as much as she warms to Freddie (Alex Pettyfer), the headmistress' son. That puts the back of Harriet even more who sees herself as Elizabeth Bennet to Freddie's Mr D'Arcy.

In a bizarre scripted plot twist, Poppy finds out that she is also quite good at Lacrosse, the same as her mum, and finds herself as Captain of the school team; a team that hasn't won a match in donkey's years. As Poppy settles in and gets used to her new environment, Harriet is busy scheming on how to get rid of the troublesome American.

Visual

Once more with a Universal disc, we get that awful bloody banner across the middle. I'm past caring now that it's intermittent rather than ever-present. It shouldn't be there, so stop bloody doing it. You may just stop piracy prior to release, which is normally only a couple of weeks at most prior to official release, but the minute someone buys a copy then you can guarantee that it's ripped somewhere by someone.

Overall

She's a wild one, ooh yeah, she's a wild one. Except she's not. She's just a trifle spoiled and everything turns out as expected in a film that's aimed squarely at pre-teen girls. Oh and a rather tepid cover of aforementioned song aimed at the X-Factor generation is included over the closing credits. As a sop to the High School Musical phenomenon, there are also a couple of musical interludes, notably the disco-fied Haka prior to the final hockey match and the entrance to the school disco that could have been supplanted in just about any Girls Aloud music video.

That said, it's not that bad a film overall. I was expecting to hate this, but it's not overly bad I guess and that may just have to do with Working Title being the hands behind this. It's clearly aimed at the international market as the school and everything about it is an outsider's stereotypical view of the English (in particular) and the home nations - even down to the matriarchal and barmy Scottish matron-like figure. That said, it kind of nice to imagine that there are still corners of this nation that are decidedly English still rather than chav-central.



The young cast are rather good, which was a surprise to me, and whilst Emma Roberts is a good enough lead, it was Welsh-born Kimberley Nixon who stood out for me as best mate Kate. Natasha Richardson puts in a rather maternal and safe performance as the school headmistress who tries to guide the young Poppy, and to be honest I really thought that there was going to be some kind of predictable love connection with Aidan Quinn, but I was wrong. The teen love interest box is ticked with the inclusion of Stormbreaker's Alex Pettyfer as the headmistress' son, pretty sure that young females will be swooning as he drives through the countryside in his open-topped sports car.

One for the girls definitely.