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| Nickelodeon should do better. |
I remember that Harriet the Spy was a movie at one point, but that is
about all I remember about the Nickelodeon production. Being
a Nickelodeon product, I only had
two hopes for this movie upon my recent re-watching a.) Somebody got
“slimed”
for doing the secret action and b.) Danny Tamborelli had a guest role.
To my dismay, Harriet had neither. Instead this
100 minute “spy” movie
made me want to fucking choke on the rain coat the title character wore
everyday on her “spy” missions.
Not many
moments of this film were able to redeem its
rampant terrible-ness, I’ll try to hit them all in this one paragraph
(shouldn’t take too much space).
If there was one shining moment it had to be the pre-opening
credits gag
featuring the old Nick-nick-nick-nick-nick-nickelodeon theme song, from
there
it was one awful scene followed by another. Still in the
opening credits the one part I caught was that
the music supervisor of this movie was named Jamshied Sharifi and for
that, I
thank his parents for making up the awesome name Jamshied (it may be a
real
name of a Norse God for all I know but I don’t care to research it). And this sentence concludes the list of
redeemable qualities of this movie.
They peaked with the name of their music supervisor.
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| The 6th grade Walter White on the right. |
Anyways, I’ll trudge through.
The movie is about a 6th grade girl who jots down
every useless thought and rude observation she has into her notebook.
She has only two friends in the world;
one of these friends is a black wannabe scientist named Janie, with an
unhealthy
obsession for replicating mold in her easy-bake oven. Who
the hell wants to replicate mold??? Her parents should
definitely be locked up for letting her keep the mold laboratory that
she has
created in her room. Her other
friend is a kid named Sport, played by the actor who starred in the toy
murdering flick Small Soldiers.
Every half-wit in Harriet’s hometown
knows Sport’s dad as a struggling author and renowned fuck-up. His
dad does little in the movie other
than taking frequent cat naps and leaving all the basic homecare of
cooking,
cleaning and balancing the families budget to Sport while he is also
trying to
learn long division.
What to say about the main character, the child
named
Harriet. Seriously, what were her parents plans with that name. It
is more fit for a spinster or
children’s piano teacher than a girl trying to burst into the 6th
grade spy scene. So Harriet is a detached outcast who wryly asserts her
superiority complex by writing shitty things about all her classmates in
her
private “spy” notebook.
I’m unsure why she is referred to as a spy because
this
movie doesn’t once hit any of the spy film tropes: no eastern European
villains, no golden guns, no girls in skimpy bikinis. Instead,
she just writes stupid observations in her diary –
she’s more Chelsea Handler than handing out surreptitious ass-kickings.
Here’s
an example of her Woodward and Bernstein-esque musings on her
classmates:
“Pinky Whitehead’s DNA was combined with a pint of vanilla yogurt at
birth. Kerry Andrews thinks she’s
cool because she spent her summer vacation growing boobs. And
Beth Allen Hanson – I wish someone
would just kick her and get it over with.”
While
Harriet is doing her best to win “most likely to grow
up to be the bitchiest Real Housewife of the CIA,” the real terror of
the sixth
grade, Marion Hawthorne, rides her abrasive personality and popularity
to win the
class presidency, which includes the envious position of editor-in-chief
of the
class paper.
 |
| A far way from Small Soldiers. |
Clearly their teacher Ms.
Elson’s executive branch of class
politics is drunk with power. It
completely disregards any freedom of press claims by placing the leader
of the
free classroom in charge of its only journalistic enterprise’s content.
Honestly though this president Marion
totally blows. Not only is she
your stereotypical stuck-up movie bitch, but she somehow has the love
and
attention of everyone in the class from the weirdo’s (a kid who wears
the same
purple socks everyday) to the theater kids (Pinky Whitehurst totally
kills the
soliloquy from Hamlet). She’s such
a bitch that she makes Harriet, the girl who writes that if it were up
to her,
one of her classmates would just hang themselves, seem empathetic.
Harriet and
her outcast buds break down Marion’s first edition of the paper the only
way
they know how... by saying it is “the crap that crap wants to be when it grows
up.
"(I’m saving that biting critical nugget for later use)
Outside of
the classroom Harriet is secretly watching all
the strange townies like some old dude with a ponytail who owns 30 cats
all
named after jazz singers, and a Chinese dude getting acupuncture in his
grocery
store, which clearly cannot pass health codes. Eventually
she decides it’s a good idea to break into a
house where a Pomeranian is getting dropped off because that seems
suspicious I
guess??? And some Latoya Jackson
look-alike finds Harrriet hiding
in the dumwaiter and is all “Who the fuck are you? Why are
you wearing a raincoat when it’s 78 and sunny
out?” Or something like that. Then Harriet
runs out and finally
realizes that she’s a shitty spy, because spies never get caught.
 |
| This is what a real spy looks like Harriet, take your silly notes on how Smash Adams operates. |
Her reasoning here isn’t
exactly true, because spies whether
it’s James Bond, or Jack Ryan, or Smash Adams get caught and detained
like all
the time. Otherwise there wouldn’t
be much action or suspense to their adventures. But I
don’t want to argue with Harriet because she is just
about the worst fucking spy that ever decided they were going to start a
career
in spying. At this point I was
hoping she would give up on the spy game and I could wrap this movie up
in 30
minutes.
Instead she goes back to school and their teacher
Ms. Elson
is taking suggestions for their 6th grade holiday pageant
production. These suggestions
include:
Yogurt
- Is this a theme or just a snack
you like? Either way go drown
yourself in
some Chobani.
Vlad
the Impaler – Now there’s a suggestion I’d get behind, nothing says the holidays
like
raiding and impaling the Ottomans.
Jazz
- ????
The
Manhattan Project – There might be something seriously wrong with Harriet’s
friend
Janie. I understand she’s
into science but this would cast a very dark
mushroom cloud shadow on this holiday pageant.
With all
those great and confounding ideas somehow fucking
Marion Hawthorne’s idea of “a giant holiday feast, low in fat” wins.
How creative of you Marion! And I don’t think it
is possible,
something about the words “giant” “feast” and “holiday” makes me think
this
meal doesn’t have a chance at being low in fat.
 |
| Marion Hawthorne, I believe, is the face of evil for the 90's move over Monstars. |
Anyways the kids start playing
in the park like kids do,
except Marion proffers a suggestion that they play “Buy the Volvo” in
which she
would play the car dealer and she would try to upcharge her classmates
who
would be playing couples in the market for, and I quote, “a sassy yet
affordable family vehicle.” By
this point I was really hoping that this film ended in tragedy where
Marion got
kidnapped by the weird jazz cat guy who tortured and strangled her with
his old
man ponytail. But alas, instead
the kids all just find Harriets burn book (“spy notebook”) and all
totally hate
her because she;s a bitchy writer.
So they kids decide to team up and build secret clubhouses, eat
cake and
make Harriet’s life a living hell (children have warped ideas of
revenge). Understandably Harriet’s pissed off and
gets back at these kids in a multitude of awful ways like telling a kid
that
their dad left the family for Amsterdam because he doesn’t love her.
And then
essentially one day Harriet offers the most
unapologetic apology to her close friends Sport and Janie – she
literally whispers
“I’m sorry” from the other side of the door after her parents yell at
her some.
And then the kid with purple socks
says that Harriet’s a writing rockstar and should be editor of the class
paper,
she’s like the Matt Christopher of writing insulting things about
classmates
for a 6th grade audience.
This leads to a coup of Marion’s editor-in-chief of the paper
because
this teacher has zero control of her mongrel students. Anyways
Harriet apparently learns some
stupid lesson about being nice and even prints something about Marion’s
dad not
hating her just because he ran away to inhabit the coffeehouses of
Amsterdam
instead of you know being a dad.
Sounds like love to me.
Overall this movie was pretty terrible and I kept checking to see
how
much longer I had to endure. I
considered changing the point of this blog to just reviewing episodes of
the
new Disney show “Dog with a
Blog.”
No, really, this is a show and it sounded more enjoyable than the
movie I
was watching. However there were a
couple quotes I found surprisingly insightful for a movie with such a
terribly
cynical theme about writing mean observations about classmates leading
to you
being a spy/editor-in-chief. The quotes
I especially liked follow:
“Holy cats!
A veggie thief! This needs
to be investigated.” – Sure it
does.
“Frankie’s cool – American style. His
parents are cool – Chinese style.”
This
apparently involves yelling and running a local grocery – thanks for the
stereotyping Nickelodeon.
Harriet (rich girl): I hate money.
Sport (the resident poor kid): You’d like it a
lot more
if you didn’t have any.
(Written
on a note ) “Harriet smells.”
I can’t
say I’m surprised by hearing this.
“You’re an individual and that makes
people nervous, and
it will your whole life.” Run-on
sentence aside, this was a true
statement by Harriet’s nanny, Golly.
Apparently
Hey Arnold’s pilot premiered with this movie –
this makes the entire movie worthwhile.
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