野孩子 Wild Child review by David Mercier

Spoiled Californian teenager Poppy (Roberts) has annoyed her father for the last time. Wanting to teach his designer label-obsessed daughter some discipline and responsibility, he sends her to a posh private school in England. At first Poppy really struggles to fit in, and makes enemies of head girl Harriet (King). However, she eventually befriends a group of girls, who agree to help her get expelled. But Poppy soon realises that these friends are unlike any others she has had before, and starts to have doubts about wanting to leave.

To give Wild Child credit where it's due, the film is certainly among the better offerings of its type. The acting is generally okay, and the film is actually rather funny in places as well. But it is also predictable, filled with nagging issues, and does too many things by the numbers to warrant a recommendation.

You know the story. American girl comes over to a snooty English boarding school and changes the girls into Paris Hilton clones in helping them break free of their oppressive and traditional ways. Well, not exactly. One area in which Wild Child goes against the grain is that the transformation of the characters works both ways. There is a sense of compromise, which also helps the friendships seem more genuine and better constructed. All the girls learn things from each other, and mostly things that are positive. But despite offering more subtle changes to form in some respects, the film progresses and shapes itself exactly as you would expect. Bad characters get their obvious come-uppance, there are times where, true to formula, the friendships seem shattered and dead in the water, and various lessons are learned by various people. These are all familiar ideas and plot elements, which is a bit of a shame.

Roberts is growing steadily as a young actress. Like a lot of young people in the business her early roles were rather dominated by a style of acting that I suppose you could call 'fidgety enthusiasm'. But she has stopped overplaying things so much, and seems more comfortable with complicated emotions. The other girls are also impressive. I was particularly impressed with Juno Temple (Drippy) and Kimberley Nixon (Kate), who really got to grips with the feeling of their characters. They seemed like they could be real people, as opposed to generic schoolkids. Richardson is fine as the headmistress, though Daisy Donovan and Jason Watkins' characters - also teachers - seem to have come straight from a farce. There's something a bit too silly and strange about them both. The only person I didn't really care for was King. Harriet is supposed to be a bully, and a generally nasty piece of work. But King either plays her with too much intensity or too much nervous awkwardness. Her performance is too on the nose.

There are bits of Wild Child that are really very funny, and it is certainly possible to see that effort has gone into to creating the characters and picking the right cast. But every time it does something different, unexpected or interesting, it retaliates with something else far more formulaic. You'll be impressed by the range of the characters, but then you'll roll your eyes at the 'getting ready for the prom accompanied by teenybopper music' montage. And on some occasions you'll laugh at the surprisingly witty dialogue, but you'll get fed up with the walking, talking hairdo (Alex Pettyfer) of a love interest. And the whole film just goes on and on undermining itself like this.

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