How many films have you seen where the family moves to a dilapidated mansion in a serene sylvan environment? Just last week I reviewed a similar setup in The Spiderwick Chronicles. Well, Roxy does that one better by having the town actually named Serenity Falls, just in case you were wondering what sort of environment Roxy, her mother, and tag along friend Max were moving into. Of course the house they rent is supposedly haunted, setting Roxy out on a quest to discover the genesis of the legend, which turns out to be more about land rights than spectral entities. It's so by-the-numbers that you could almost make a drinking game out of the clichés utilized throughout the film. There's the setup flashback, leading to our present time's arrival at the home (revealed in a pullback with suitably creepy music). There's the befuddled town mayor who also serves as Roxy's Mom's boss at the bank (and you know how misleading being apparently befuddled can be in a film like this). There's the eligible bachelor assistant manager at the bank who quickly develops eyes for Roxy's Mom. There's the seemingly odd female attorney who rented the home to Roxy's mom who also wants to do repair work around it. The only real question is, where's Scooby Doo in all of this?

While Wallace just annoyed the hell out of me with her mangled speech patterns and strange semi-smirk that looked like she was trying to pass an errant kidney stone, my guess is young girls will flock to her characterization like bees to honey. Roxy gets to wear really cute clothes, has a super-groovy knit beanie planted atop her perfectly coiffed long tresses, and she's a know-it-all (despite a supposedly endearing propensity for malapropisms), certainly every young girl's dream come true. Robin Brule does her best as Susan, Roxy's mom, and injects a little heart and soul into a patently trite role. Stephanie Ann Mills does a creditable job as the attorney/handywoman, though the denouement about her character's ultimate motives is going to be obvious to anyone older than 9 or 10. The film veers into near political incorrectness with an oafish Indian (as in far eastern Indian) medical student who is written as a kind of narcoleptic Apu from The Simpsons. I doubt seriously that Vik Sahay will be listing this role at the top of his resume. The nicest performance comes from Jessica Booker, as an elderly woman who holds the secret to the entire mystery. Her scenes toward the end of the movie are touchingly delivered, something the rest of this trainwreck could use in droves.

Roxy does have a nice look, with lots of nice shots of the supposed little town, and in those final scenes with Booker's character, there are actually some nice truths in the teleplay about moving on after tragedy. It's all undercut, however, by an omnipresent music score that takes "Mickey Mousing" to a whole new level, with virtually the slightest movement telegraphed by a musical comment. Yes, this is a film geared toward the younger set, but I think even kids are able to figure out the emotional context of a scene without the "help" of some silly xylophone riffs or some screeching minor seconds in the strings.

This is just the sort of specific audience targeted project (meaning girls between the ages of, say, 4-9) that makes me very glad I'm the father of boys.

The DVD

Video:
Roxy, for all its faults, does look very nice, with a sharp, enhanced 1.78:1 transfer. Color and saturation are both excellent.

Sound:
There are DD 5.1 soundtracks in English, Spanish and Portuguese available, as well as a standard stereo French track. The DD 5.1 mixes offer excellent fidelity and separation, with some good use of sound effects. Wallace, unfortunately, is incomprehensible a lot of the time, no matter how good the mix is.

Extras:
There are quite a few extras on this DVD, most very short. The powers that be at Nickolodeon are obviously priming Wallace as the "next big thing" in ingenue starlets, so she is given two pretty lame music videos here. There are also blooper reels and deleted scenes, as well as some screentests. A couple of short featurettes show quite a bit behind the scenes action. Young kids will probably have the most fun with the "Hidden Treasures" feature, which basically amounts to easter eggs (all identified by a readily seen magnifying glass) spread throughout the submenus. Most of these bring up more screentests and deleted scenes.

Final Thoughts:
Nancy Drew has nothing to worry about. Families with young girls will probably do OK with a rental of this, everyone else should most definitely skip it.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet