REVIEWED - FIRST DAUGHTER: You can imagine the difficulties that director Forrest Whitaker and his cabal of writers must have encountered (or imagined) when they set out to make a teen comedy based around the adventures of the President's daughter during her first year in college. Cleverly, they allow Katie Holmes to mention Chelsea Clinton in passing, thus ruling out that high-flying scholar as a model, and there is only one Katie, so young Samantha Mackenzie can't be a version of the Bush twins, can she?
Well, we do get a scene in which Ms Holmes - whose career is slipping back into the slush bucket after good work on 2003's Pieces of April - dances lasciviously on a bar while juiced out of her noggin on highballs. Draw your own conclusions.
Her dad is played by cuddly, soft-edged Michael Keaton, a prominent supporter of the Democrats, but, before we run away with the idea that President Mackenzie might be a surrogate Martin Sheen (and thus a surrogate-surrogate Clinton), we encounter some Amnesty International supporters saying rude things about his human rights record. In truth, First Daughter is so neutered by its own coyness that it barely exists at all. If you removed all the scenes in which Samantha assured various people - her predictably African-American roommate, her dishy dorm supervisor, her horrendous old bat of a mother - that all she wanted to be was an ordinary girl, then we would be left with little else but credits and a celebrity cameo by Joan Rivers.
Should you still feel the need to endure First Daughter, pay close attention to the protestors hanging around during the ballroom scene that kicks off the third act. Their placards call for domestic health care reform and action on HIV in Africa; though, considering their further demand to recognise something called "Sein Fein", education should, perhaps, be an equally urgent priority for the administration.
