First Daughter Review

It must be tough to live your life in a media spotlight, especially when circumstances out of your control mean that you're a public figure. That's certainly the case for Samantha Mackenzie (Katie Holmes). You see in many ways Sam is your typical American teenager, eager to escape the clutches of mummy and daddy and spread her wings at a college as far from home as she can possibly get. But this was always going to be tough because Sam is the only daughter of US President John Mackenzie (Michael Keaton). As such her every move is shadowed - and often ridiculed - by the media while her omnipresent bodyguards make blending in hard. However a burgeoning relationship with a fellow student (Marc Blucas) perks Sam up - until she discovers he's not all that he seems.

Wow, dentists must love films like "First Daughter" because it's so drenched in sugar that cavities must be a real danger for any audience member. The opening and closing monologues, which set the film up as a fairy tale with the first family portrayed as royalty, certainly don't help while the whole romance between Sam and her beau is so drippy and saccharine that you don't really care what happens to them which is a shame, especially from Holmes whose good work in "Pieces Of April" and "The Gift" had done much to shake off her teen TV past. The issues of first family relationships have certainly been examined with more humour, wit and emotion in "The West Wing", which indicate that First Daughter may have been better off as a TV movie.