First Daughter

The teenage daughter (Katie Holmes) of the U.S. president (Michael Keaton) longs for a quiet, normal college life without paparazzi or the Secret Service. Even allowing for the awful been-here-seen-this banality of the premise, the movie misfires in every scene. The script (by Jessica Bendinger, Kate Kondell and Jerry O’Connell) has a meandering, almost nonexistent plot and a tin ear for dialogue; almost every line is literally unspeakable, like something that would get a C-minus in an intro-to-creative-writing class. Director Forest Whitaker can’t be blamed for succumbing to the script; frankly, it would defeat Steven Spielberg or Orson Welles. Even so, Whitaker directs with a leaden hand, and every actor gives a poor performance: Holmes’ charm is stillborn, and Keaton looks, for once, strangely awkward.