53
Metascore
31 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70Washington PostAnn HornadayWashington PostAnn HornadayManages to navigate the era of cellphones and Mean Girls with retro nostalgia and wholesomeness, making it a rare girl-powered outing for tweens in an otherwise guy-centric summer.
- 63Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsChicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNice. The film itself is more nice than good, but nice isn't the worst trait.
- 58Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumThe culprit, I'd say, is the uninteresting casting of Miss Roberts in the title role. She's a pleasant enough performer, but her made-for-teen-TV acting style, a perky blandness, doesn't supply a clue as to the appeal of Nancy Drew after all these years.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenThe Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenThe culture-clash procedural, which brings the small-town teen to big bad Hollywood, feels more perfunctory than inspired.
- 50Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanThis tweener goddess--a virtual Batcave of handy accessories packed in her shoulder bag--may prove too annoying for general audiences, particularly as Roberts plays her comically straight.
- 50ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliAn effective translation of the source material, but that's not necessarily a good thing.
- 42Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerChristian Science MonitorPeter RainerEmma Roberts is squeaky-clean to a fault and so is the movie.
- 40The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottAs it is, Nancy Drew stands as an example of how to take a foolproof, time-tested formula -- a young detective using smarts and determination to solve a case -- and mess it up with superficial cleverness and pandering hackwork. How this happened is hardly a mystery; botched adaptations are as common as BlackBerries in Hollywood. But it is nonetheless something of a crime.
- 30VarietyVarietyPurportedly an attempt to modernize the young detective's adventures for a new generation of tweens, the pic instead serves up stale mystery-movie cliches and overcooked red herrings in a thoroughly wooden adaptation.
- 20Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAustin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenIt's not really a matter of Nancy's retro look and grounding in the fundamentals of sleuthing that separates the women from the girls but, rather, this film's lack of gaiety and surprise that makes it dud for old and new generations of the books' fans.