First Daughter

Directed by Forest Whitaker, First Daughter follows the daughter (Katie Holmes’ Samantha MacKenzie) of the President of the United States (Michael Keaton’s John MacKenzie) as she enrolls in college and falls for a hunky student named James (Marc Blucas). Filmmaker Whitaker, armed with Jessica Bendinger and Kate Kondell’s screenplay, delivers a genial, gentle romance that fares best in its lighthearted and briskly-paced opening stretch, as the movie benefits substantially from Holmes’ charismatic performance and its ongoing emphasis on Samantha’s appealing relationship with Blucas’ kind-hearted figure – with, as well, the picture’s pervasively affable feel heightened by Keaton’s predictably magnetic turn. It’s clear, then, that First Daughter‘s inability to become much more than an agreeable time-waster stems from its padded-out, overlong running time and oddly uneventful second half, with, in terms of the latter, the movie’s eventual transformation from a breezy romcom into a syrupy teen melodrama paving the way for a meandering final stretch that peters out rather significantly – which, in the final analysis, does cement the film’s place as a decent-enough (albeit entirely forgettable) endeavor that should’ve topped out at around 90 minutes.

**1/2 out of ****