Despite being 25 years older and the opposite sex of the main characters, I rather surprisingly enjoyed this movie. Writer/Director Gurinder Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham) knows how to make feel-good movies, of which this definitely is one. She is aided by likable and talented newcomer Georgia Groome in the lead role.

Georgia Nicolson is fourteen years old and obsessed with boys and her upcoming 15th birthday party. Her and her friends spend their time plotting ways to meet the boy of their dreams. When Robbie and his brother Tom start going to the same school as the girls, Georgia and her best friend Jas see their chance for boyfriends and move in quickly. The path to true love never runs smooth of course and Georgia must deal with jealousy, embarrassing parents, a younger sister and other girls with designs on the same boy as her.

It's a sign of the times that the innocence of this movie makes it feel old-fashioned. The girls want boyfriends they can snog (kiss), but certainly nothing more than that. The boys too, are all sweet and innocent. Georgia's family also plays a big part in the movie. She worries that her parents will get divorced (yes Eric, she has a mother and a father in this movie that are married to each other), when her father is offered a job in New Zeland and her mother hires a hot new interior designer. I suspect that this movie isn't so far off from reality, but it is far off from what you see in most Hollywood movies.

It's a young girl's fantasy movie filled as it is with the "average" girl getting the hot guy and getting her revenge over the blonde, big-busted slutty girl. That alone is enough to make this movie an anomaly. There are plenty of movies aimed at young boys (sometimes it seems like all movies), but a movie aimed at young women is fairly rare, probably harkening back to the theory that girls will watch guy films, but guys won't watch chick flicks.

Georgia Groome does a great job in the lead. She's funny and believable in her part. It's mainly due to her performance that I was able to relate to a movie so far from my own circumstances. Everyone's been in embarrassing situations, even if they haven't been a teenage English schoolgirl and thanks to Georgia's performance you can empathize with her even if you're a 40 year old American man.

Since I already told you that this is a feel-good movie, you can probably guess that it has a happy ending. Obviously it would help your enjoyment if you are a teen-age (or younger) girl, but the fact that even I was entertained by it clearly speaks volumes.

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