''Uptown Girls'' is a 2003 American
comedy-drama
Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...
film directed by
Boaz Yakin
Boaz Yakin ( he, בועז יכין, born June 20, 1966) is an Israeli-American screenwriter, film director, and producer based in New York City. He has written screenplays to films like ''The Rookie'', ''Fresh'', ''A Price Above Rubies'', '' ...
, from a screenplay by Julia Dahl, Mo Ogrodnik and Lisa Davidowitz adapted from the story by Allison Jacobs. It stars
Brittany Murphy
Brittany Anne Murphy-Monjack (; November 10, 1977 – December 20, 2009) was an American actress and singer. Born in Atlanta, Murphy moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and pursued a career in acting. Her breakthrough role was as Tai Fras ...
as a 22-year-old living a charmed life as the daughter of a famous rock and roll musician.
Dakota Fanning
Hannah Dakota Fanning (born February 23, 1994) is an American actress. She rose to prominence at the age of seven for her performance as Lucy Dawson in the drama film ''I Am Sam'' (2001), for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomina ...
,
Heather Locklear
Heather Deen Locklear (born September 25, 1961) is an American actress famous for her role as Amanda Woodward on ''Melrose Place'' (1993–1999), for which she received four consecutive Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress – Television ...
,
Marley Shelton
Marley Eve Shelton (born April 12, 1974) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Wendy Peffercorn in David Mickey Evans's coming-of-age comedy ''The Sandlot'' (1993), the Customer in Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's neo-noir ...
,
Donald Faison
Donald Adeosun Faison (; born June 22, 1974) is an American actor and comedian, best known for his leading role as Dr. Chris Turk in the ABC/NBC comedy-drama ''Scrubs'' (2001–2010), and a supporting role as Murray in both the film ''Clueless'' ...
and
Jesse Spencer
Jesse Gordon Spencer (born 12 February 1979) is an Australian actor and musician. He is best known for his roles as Billy Kennedy on the Australian soap opera ''Neighbours'' (1994–2000, 2005, 2022), Robert Chase on the American medical drama ...
also feature in the film.
Plot
Molly Gunn is a fun-loving, free-spirited young woman who lives off the ample trust fund of her late rock legend father, Tommy Gunn. Molly falls for singer Neal Fox when he plays at her birthday party thrown by her best friends, Huey and Ingrid. They share a night of passion, but he leaves in the morning, saying that he cannot stay in Molly's life. Adding to her misfortune, she discovers that her father's accountant embezzled all her money, leaving her penniless and homeless. She moves in with Ingrid, who tells her that in order to stay with her, she must find a job.
Molly begins working as a nanny for an eight-year-old
hypochondriac
Hypochondriasis or hypochondria is a condition in which a person is excessively and unduly worried about having a serious illness. An old concept, the meaning of hypochondria has repeatedly changed. It has been claimed that this debilitating cond ...
named Lorraine "Ray" Schleine, who is the daughter of Roma Schleine, a music executive who is too busy to notice Ray. Ray's father is in a coma and is being treated at home by a private nurse which causes Ray to stifle her emotions to maintain order. Although she enjoys ballet, she refuses to freestyle and often quotes
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Барышников, p=mʲɪxɐˈil bɐ'rɨʂnʲɪkəf; lv, Mihails Barišņikovs; born January 28, 1948) is a Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Latvian-born R ...
: "Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun." Molly attempts to show her how to have fun, which at first causes much conflict between them, but eventually Ray opens up to let Molly in.
Molly continues to pursue Neal and holds onto his lucky jacket in hopes of seeing him again. After a baking accident, Molly causes a fire that damages Neal's jacket. She redesigns it to fix the damage, but Neal breaks up with Molly when he sees it, insisting he has to focus on his music career and does not have time for her flightiness. Soon after, he lands a record deal with Roma and has a hit music video with a song that Molly inspired him to write, all while wearing the jacket Molly made. Disgusted, Molly agrees to Ingrid's suggestions to sell off her possessions so she can prove that she is growing up. However, after a fight, Ingrid kicks Molly out, and Molly goes to live with Huey. One night, after fighting with and feeling hurt by Neal again, Molly spends the night with Ray after feeling alone at Huey's apartment and finds Neal one morning, having slept with Roma.
The budding friendship between Molly and Ray continues to develop when Molly takes Ray to
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, Manhattan Beach to its east, L ...
and explains that when her parents died, she ran away to Coney Island and rode the tea cups. She encourages Ray to talk to her comatose father, and promises that it will help him improve. However, Ray's father dies the next day, and Ray tells Roma to fire Molly. In Roma's office, Molly calls Roma out for never paying attention to her daughter. As she leaves, Molly runs into Neal, who begs for a reconciliation as she was his whole inspiration. Molly turns him down and admonishes him for only caring about her when it is convenient for him. Ray runs away from home and Roma begs Molly to find her. Molly finds Ray at Coney Island, riding in the tea cups. Despite being furious with Molly for raising her hopes, she collapses into Molly's arms, crying, finally coming to terms with her grief.
Molly, deciding to take charge of her own life, takes Ray's advice to auction off her late father's guitar collection to an unknown buyer; this enables her to afford her own place. At the wake for Ray's father, Molly meets other musicians who ask her to design their clothes after seeing Neal's jacket in his video. She and Ingrid also make amends and Molly finds Ray to apologize as well. She promises to stay friends with Ray and enrolls in design school after realizing her talent for fashion.
Molly arrives at Ray's recital late and is pleased to see Ray is wearing the tutu Molly designed for her earlier. She is surprised when Ray dances freestyle to Neal singing "Molly Smiles", a song written for her by her father when she was a child. He plays using Tommy Gunn's acoustic guitar, while the remaining ballerinas dance with the other guitars from her father's collection, revealing that he was the anonymous buyer. In a voice-over, Ray says that the end was a new beginning for all of them.
Cast
Reception
The film opened at number five at the US box office, grossing
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
11,277,367 in its opening weekend.
''Uptown Girls'' was panned by critics, with
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
giving it a 13% rating based on 112 reviews with the consensus: "With two obnoxious lead characters and an uneven screenplay, ''Uptown Girls'' fails to charm." A positive review came from
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
, who awarded the film three stars out of four and likened Murphy to
Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American actress, comedienne and producer. She was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning five times, and was the recipient of several other accolades, such as the Golden ...
.
Following Brittany Murphy's death at the age of 32 on December 20, 2009, Dakota Fanning, at age 15, stated that she cherished the time they spent together while working on the film, and that she was "very grateful that
hehad the chance to work with
urphy"
Accolades
The film won and was nominated for a number of awards throughout 2004.
Home media
''Uptown Girls'' was released to VHS and DVD in Region 1 on January 6, 2004.
References
External links
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Reviews – Uptown Girls
{{Boaz Yakin
2003 films
2003 comedy-drama films
2000s buddy comedy-drama films
2000s coming-of-age comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
2000s female buddy films
American buddy comedy-drama films
American coming-of-age comedy-drama films
American female buddy films
Films about nannies
Films directed by Boaz Yakin
Films scored by Joel McNeely
Films set in New York City
Films shot in New York City
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
2000s American films