My walk through the darkness is almost over…I’m beginning to see the light. Well, something lighter anyway.

WHAT A GIRL WANTS is clearly a movie made for kids – so evidenced by the squeaky clean starlet who plays the lead character. It’s got admirable themes of identity and family, and in the right hands might even make for a good movie. But this wasn’t really put into the right hands, and what I endured was akin to going to the county fair and consuming too many bags of cotton candy. This is a bit of a shame given the talent involved (I dare you to speak a bad word about Colin Firth or Jonathan Pryce)…and that teenagers deserve good movies to call their own.

I look at this movie and wonder “what if”…as in what if it’d been given the care and attention of a film like CLUELESS or EASY A (no small co-incidence that those – like WHAT A GIRL WANTS – are both loosely based on classic lit?).

But here’s the thing, as much as the snob in me would like to rip this film to shreds, I really can’t. It’s harmless. It may not have enlightened me in any particular way, but it didn’t anger me the way that some of the others films I’ve watched this week did.

I can’t even play the “Why does my wife own this?” card. While this film really isn’t my thing, and as much as I might want to mock it for being a teen-centric movie in an adult’s movie collection…we all have films like this that we’ve seen and possibly own. They are the lighter fare that we maybe shouldn’t like, but do…the movies that make us feel better when we’re in bed with a cold.

For me, it’s movies like MAJOR LEAGUE, REAL GENIUS, FACE/OFF, and SPEED. Movies that I would never hand over to someone and say “You gotta watch this!”, movies that a filmgoer like me should be “above”…but films that I come back to nonetheless. If I watch THE THIRD MAN with dinner, then FEVER PITCH is my dessert.

So while this film was a head-shaker at times – I think there was a script quota on Amanda Bynes acting klutzy – to pick it apart would be akin to stepping on a bunny. I can wish it was better ’til the cows come home, but movies like this are made by filmmakers who only want them to be “good enough”. And if we’re measuring whether or not the film was good enough, one only has to look at the box-office numbers to realize that the film doubled its money. So mission accomplished.

It certainly isn’t my cup of tea, but to paraphrase the great Douglas Adams, WHAT A GIRL WANTS is “Mostly Harmless”.