Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
53
(31 sources)
53
(31 sources)
-
83
-
83
Portland Oregonian
Parents who want smart, harmless movies that don't condescend for their school-age kids -- a rare thing these days -- should be grateful for Nancy Drew. Read Full Review » -
75
New York Daily News
A very clever update of the 16-year-old heroine, managing to make her seem both as square as the Bobbsey Twins and as contemporary as MySpace. Read Full Review » -
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
What's not to like about a girl detective who is a good citizen and better student, a leader rather than a follower, a resourceful seamstress who won't cut her clothes to fit this year's fashions? Read Full Review » -
75
TV Guide
The movie's refusal to treat young girls like silly tramps-in-training is almost radical: It's just good, clean fun and actually offers children of a certain age a role model even adults can feel good about. Read Full Review » -
70
Los Angeles Times
Hopefully, the girls who see Nancy Drew this summer will take their cues from the smart, engaged, intellectually curious character Roberts so charmingly portrays. Read Full Review » -
70
Chicago Reader
The postmodernist evocations of the past (roughly the 50s through the 80s) are a charming mishmash, delivered with wit and style. Read Full Review » -
70
Salon.com
Fleming's movie is, at the very least, a tribute to Nancy Drew's longevity -- and a valentine to all of us who, even as we strive to live in the present, just like old things. Read Full Review » -
70
Washington Post
Manages to navigate the era of cellphones and Mean Girls with retro nostalgia and wholesomeness, making it a rare girl-powered outing for tweens in an otherwise guy-centric summer. Read Full Review » -
70
New York Magazine
It's one of the few tween movies that isn't in your face; its limpness becomes appealing. Read Full Review » -
70
Film Threat
Overall, I found myself not hating the film. There's just one thing that troubles me about the way Nancy Drew is depicted. She is determined, a perfectionist, uber-organized, and efficient. Those qualities can be associated to geekdom, but they're also symptoms of someone with a propensity for disordered eating or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hmmm. Read Full Review » -
67
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Once the rote mystery elements take over, the film devolves into a second-rate whodunit for kids, but even then, Roberts' irrepressible cheeriness and curiosity in the face of danger proves too adorable to resist. Read Full Review » -
63
Chicago Tribune
Nice. The film itself is more nice than good, but nice isn't the worst trait. Read Full Review » -
63
New York Post
A well-written and in many ways pleasing update of a character who has endured in print for 78 years. Too bad it's sadly slow-paced. Read Full Review » -
58
Entertainment Weekly
The culprit, I'd say, is the uninteresting casting of Miss Roberts in the title role. She's a pleasant enough performer, but her made-for-teen-TV acting style, a perky blandness, doesn't supply a clue as to the appeal of Nancy Drew after all these years. Read Full Review » -
50
Boston Globe
The movie's fodder for tweener girls with indiscriminate Nick TV addictions, but there's just enough wit on display to make you realize it could have been worse. Read Full Review » -
50
San Francisco Chronicle
The mystery of Nancy Drew' is how a movie can get so many things right -- particularly the inspired casting of Emma Roberts as the spunky teenage sleuth -- yet ultimately disappoint. Read Full Review » -
50
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The teen parties and sidekick silliness are time filler, and not very good filler either -- why even Bruce Willis shows up in a scene that has nothing to do with the story. Read Full Review » -
50
USA Today
Nancy Drew is 16, dresses like she's 12 and acts like she's about 45. And therein lies the problem with this adaptation of the beloved book series. The movie can't quite decide how old it wants to be -- or who it's for. Read Full Review » -
50
The Hollywood Reporter
The culture-clash procedural, which brings the small-town teen to big bad Hollywood, feels more perfunctory than inspired. Read Full Review » -
50
Village Voice
This tweener goddess--a virtual Batcave of handy accessories packed in her shoulder bag--may prove too annoying for general audiences, particularly as Roberts plays her comically straight. Read Full Review » -
50
ReelViews
An effective translation of the source material, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Read Full Review » -
42
Christian Science Monitor
Emma Roberts is squeaky-clean to a fault and so is the movie. Read Full Review » -
40
The New York Times
As it is, Nancy Drew stands as an example of how to take a foolproof, time-tested formula -- a young detective using smarts and determination to solve a case -- and mess it up with superficial cleverness and pandering hackwork. How this happened is hardly a mystery; botched adaptations are as common as BlackBerries in Hollywood. But it is nonetheless something of a crime. Read Full Review » -
40
Empire
That this is just about passable as a divorced parent's weekend treat is down to Roberts' charm and the timeless appeal of Nancy herself. Read Full Review » -
38
Miami Herald
No rose-colored memories can improve this tedious interpretation of the famous girl detective's adventures. Nancy Drew falls somewhere between "The Haunted Mansion" and the live-action "Scooby Doo" movies in terms of quality but is more irritating than either. Read Full Review » -
38
Charlotte Observer
It's marginally possible that Nancy Drew is spoofing high school adventure movies, and I almost hope so. Otherwise, it's unwatchable on every level. Read Full Review » -
38
Premiere
At the end of the movie, the only mystery left unsolved is where your time and money have gone. Read Full Review » -
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Call it Nancy Drew and the Case of the Confused Adaptation. Read Full Review » -
30
Variety
Purportedly an attempt to modernize the young detective's adventures for a new generation of tweens, the pic instead serves up stale mystery-movie cliches and overcooked red herrings in a thoroughly wooden adaptation. Read Full Review » -
20
Austin Chronicle
It's not really a matter of Nancy's retro look and grounding in the fundamentals of sleuthing that separates the women from the girls but, rather, this film's lack of gaiety and surprise that makes it dud for old and new generations of the books' fans. Read Full Review »
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