Daddy's Girl (1996)

Good movie but grossly overrated

An Exercise In Nonsense

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

As is probably obvious from my past reviews, I have a weak spot for both Slasher and Bad Seed genre flicks. What I really liked about "Daddy's Girl" was that it violated a lot of my expectations and especially the formula that many BS movies (kind of an appropriate abbreviation) have followed in recent years, most notably the wildly overrated and amazingly dumb "Orphan." Let's be real for a second. Yes, I know this is a Pierre David production, which almost spells HACKFLICK at the starting gate. This isn't an A-grade production. The acting is OK...it's competent, as is the direction. You're not going to get an Oscar worthy film that blows your doors off or even something as stylized as Fatal Attraction. It does, however, manage to keep your attention, and I believe that's largely due to Steve Pesce's script, which is more well-researched and plotted than this class of picture usually deserves.Unlike the reviewer who raved about the script being abysmal, I thought there was a very logical progression to the problem child's (Gabrielle Boni) psychosis. Her back-story synced up well with her behaviors and motivations and she isn't presented for the first third of the film as a raving, terminally evil, maniacal psycho. Sure, she's got maladaptive behaviors, but the triggers for these behaviors turning lethal are plausible --- at least to an developing, unstable mind.In addition, there are many twists that occur which you don't see coming and many false leads. And the kills are, while not 100% bulletproof, pretty damn clever and well within the means of a capable (and motivated) child.To top it off, It doesn't end in the usual way, either. It's a strange ending, in that it doesn't hit any of the usual horror movie clichés.And that's overall why I'd recommend it. Many have commented that Rosi's performance is one-note, horrible, and hammy --- I'd say it's pretty close to dead on considering how unstable her character is supposed to be. It's not an "actorly" or polished performance and that actually feels right here. Yes, she spouts villain one liners but....maybe she watches a lot of Bad Seed movies.

A yuppie couple adopts an eleven-year-old redheaded psycho named Jody (Gabrielle Boni). Thanks to childhood trauma, she kills people who threaten to come between her and her beloved new father (William Katt). Jody makes coffins for her dolls, scares another little girl by talking about worms eating dead bodies, tries to poison her grandmother by putting drain cleaner in her prune juice (!) and makes stupid wisecracks as she beats a social worker to death with a mallet, crushes her mean school principal with a bookcase, kills a lawyer with a fire poker and shoves mom (Michele Greene) off a balcony. The only person who knows something is wrong is the nosy niece (Roxana Zal), who starts researching Jody's past. Naturally no one believes her until it's too late.Too much time is spent, in typical made-for-TV-movie fashion, on the marital woes of the parents, and this is probably nothing you haven't seen before, but it's good, dumb fun all the same thanks mostly to the engagingly evil performance by young Gabrielle Boni. She's a good crier but her 'angry' expressions and dialogue delivery are hilarious. Oh well, that's just part of the fun!

I love thrillers anyway and can usually be found surfing the dial for something dark and creepy to watch. But what's so weird about this flick is it's all shot in daylight. Everything is white and shining and happy. It's like a Disney flick. The people even talk like it's a TV movie. But then the little girl is offing people. It's very twisted. I Dig where the little girl's coming from. I think I was routing for her! Actually I think she's the one we're supposed to route for. I like flickers that make oddball choices, so I enjoyed it. Check it

May be a good movie for little girls to watch and fantasize about how bad they could be. For adults it is a boring, predictable, flatly written movie.