What a Girl Wants Critic Reviews

In her sassy but scrubbed way, Bynes is a real charmer, and What a Girl Wants is a likable throwaway. Read the full review

There's nothing wrong with fairy tales, but they don't have to be formulaic. A movie like this would have benefited from a blending of the fanciful and the inventive. Read the full review

Minnelli's comedy had its serious underpinnings: by the end of the film, a girl had become a woman. By the end of Ms. Gordon's film, the girl is still a girl, but a girl with much cooler stuff, including a stately home, a butler and a cute British boyfriend. Read the full review

Works well enough. It has a decided plus in its appealing young star, Amanda Bynes, last seen opposite Frankie Muniz in "Big Fat Liar." Read the full review

It's a tame, hypocritical fantasy.Read the full review

It's not that What a Girl Wants is dreadful; it's merely slapdash, wildly inconsistent in tone and style, and mind-numbingly predictable in character and plot. Read the full review

The movie is clearly intended for girls between the ages of 9 and 15, and for the more civilized of their brothers, and isn't of much use to anyone else. Read the full review

It's slick girlie stuff, but the cast makes it go down easy. Read the full review

It feels much more like a shameless reshuffle of "The Princess Diaries."Read the full review