Harriet the Why?

Nickelodeon should do better.

I remember that Harriet the Spy was a movie that was in theaters at one point, but that is about all I remember about the Nickelodeon production.  Being a Nickelodeon product, I only had two hopes for this movie upon my recent re-watching a.) Somebody got “slimed” for doing the secret action and b.) Danny Tamborelli had a guest role.  To my dismay, Harriet had neither.  Instead this 100 minute “spy” movie made me want to fucking choke on the rain coat the title character wore everyday on her “spy” missions. 

Not many moments of this film were able to redeem its rampant terrible-ness, I’ll try to hit them all in this one paragraph (shouldn’t take too much space).  If there was one shining moment it had to be the pre-opening credits gag featuring the old Nick-nick-nick-nick-nick-nickelodeon theme song, from there it was one awful scene followed by another.  Still in the opening credits the one part I caught was that the music supervisor of this movie was named Jamshied Sharifi and for that, I thank his parents for making up the awesome name Jamshied (it may be a real name of a Norse God for all I know but I don’t care to research it).   This sentence ends the list of redeemable qualities of this movie.  They peaked with the name of their music supervisor.

The 6th grade Walter White on the right.

Anyways, I’ll trudge through.  The movie is about a 6^th grade girl who jots down every useless thought and rude observation she has into her notebook.  She has only two friends in the world; one of these friends is a black wannabe scientist named Janie, with an unhealthy obsession for replicating mold in her easy-bake oven.  Who the hell wants to replicate mold??? Her parents should definitely be locked up for letting her keep the mold laboratory that she has created in her room.  Her other friend is a kid named Sport, played by the actor who starred in the toy murdering flick Small Soldiers.  Every half-wit in Harriet’s hometown knows Sport’s dad as a struggling author and renowned fuck-up.  His dad does little in the movie other than taking frequent cat naps and leaving all the basic homecare of cooking, cleaning and balancing the families budget to Sport while he is also trying to learn long division.

What to say about the main character, the child named Harriet. Seriously, what were her parents plans with that name.  It is more fit for a spinster or children’s piano teacher than a girl trying to burst into the 6^th grade spy scene. So Harriet is a detached outcast who wryly asserts her superiority complex by writing shitty things about all her classmates in her private “spy” notebook. 

I’m unsure why she is referred to as a spy because this movie doesn’t once hit any of the spy film tropes: no eastern European villains, no golden guns, no girls in skimpy bikinis.  Instead, she just writes stupid observations in her diary – she’s more Chelsea Handler than handing out surreptitious ass-kickings. Here’s an example of her Woodward and Bernstein-esque musings on her classmates: “Pinky Whitehead’s DNA was combined with a pint of vanilla yogurt at birth.  Kerry Andrews thinks she’s cool because she spent her summer vacation growing boobs.  And Beth Allen Hanson – I wish someone would just kick her and get it over with.” 

While Harriet is doing her best to win “most likely to grow up to be the bitchiest Real Housewife of the CIA,” the real terror of the sixth grade, Marion Hawthorne, rides her abrasive personality and popularity to win the class presidency, which includes the envious position of editor-in-chief of the class paper. 

A far way from Small Soldiers.

Clearly their teacher Ms. Elson’s executive branch of class politics is drunk with power.  It completely disregards any freedom of press claims by placing the leader of the free classroom in charge of its only journalistic enterprise’s content.  Honestly though this president Marion totally blows.  Not only is she your stereotypical stuck-up movie bitch, but she somehow has the love and attention of everyone in the class from the weirdo’s (a kid who wears the same purple socks everyday) to the theater kids (Pinky Whitehurst totally kills the soliloquy from Hamlet).  She’s such a bitch that she makes Harriet, the girl who writes that if it were up to her, one of her classmates would just hang themselves, seem empathetic. Harriet and her outcast buds break down Marion’s first edition of the paper the only way they know by saying it is “the crap that crap wants to be when it grows up. (I’m saving that biting critical nugget for later use)

Outside of the classroom Harriet is secretly watching all the strange townies like some old dude with a ponytail who owns 30 cats all named after jazz singers, and a Chinese dude getting acupuncture in his grocery store, which clearly cannot pass health codes.  Eventually she decides it’s a good idea to break into a house where a Pomeranian is getting dropped off because that seems suspicious I guess???  And some Latoya Jackson look-alike finds Harrriet  hiding in the dumwaiter and is all “Who the fuck are you?  Why are you wearing a raincoat when it’s 78 and sunny out?”  Or something like that.  Then Harriet runs out and finally realizes that she’s a shitty spy, because spies never get caught. 

This is what a real spy looks like Harriet, take your silly notes on how Smash Adams operates.

Her reasoning here isn’t exactly true, because spies whether it’s James Bond, or Jack Ryan, or Smash Adams get caught and detained like all the time.  Otherwise there wouldn’t be much action or suspense to their adventures.  But I don’t want to argue with Harriet because she is just about the worst fucking spy that ever decided they were going to start a career in spying.  At this point I was hoping she would give up on the spy game and I could wrap this movie up in 30 minutes. 

Instead she goes back to school and their teacher Ms. Elson is taking suggestions for their 6^th grade holiday pageant production.  These suggestions include:

            Yogurt -  Is this a theme or just a snack you like?  Either way go drown yourself in some Chobani.

            Vlad the Impaler – Now there’s a suggestion I’d get behind, nothing says the holidays like raiding and impaling the Ottomans.

            Jazz -  ????

            The Manhattan Project – There might be something seriously wrong with Harriet’s friend Janie.  I understand she’s into science but this would cast a very dark mushroom cloud shadow on this holiday pageant.

With all those great and confounding ideas somehow fucking Marion Hawthorne’s idea of “a giant holiday feast, low in fat” wins.  How creative of you Marion!  And I don’t think it is possible, something about the words “giant” “feast” and “holiday” makes me think this meal doesn’t have a chance at being low in fat.

Marion Hawthorne, I believe, is the face of evil for the 90's move over Monstars.

Anyways the kids start playing in the park like kids do, except Marion proffers a suggestion that they play “Buy the Volvo” in which she would play the car dealer and she would try to upcharge her classmates who would be playing couples in the market for, and I quote, “a sassy yet affordable family vehicle.”  By this point I was really hoping that this film ended in tragedy where Marion got kidnapped by the weird jazz cat guy who tortured and strangled her with his old man ponytail.  But alas, instead the kids all just find Harriets burn book (“spy notebook”) and all totally hate her because she;s a bitchy writer.  So they kids decide to team up and build secret clubhouses, eat cake and make Harriet’s life a living hell (children have warped ideas of revenge).  Understandably Harriet’s pissed off and gets back at these kids in a multitude of awful ways like telling a kid that their dad left the family for Amsterdam because he doesn’t love her.

And then essentially one day Harriet offers the most unapologetic apology to her close friends Sport and Janie – she literally whispers “I’m sorry” from the other side of the door after her parents yell at her some.  And then the kid with purple socks says that Harriet’s a writing rockstar and should be editor of the class paper, she’s like the Matt Christopher of writing insulting things about classmates for a 6^th grade audience.  This leads to a coup of Marion’s editor-in-chief of the paper because this teacher has zero control of her mongrel students.  Anyways Harriet apparently learns some stupid lesson about being nice and even prints something about Marion’s dad not hating her just because he ran away to inhabit the coffeehouses of Amsterdam instead of you know being a dad.  Sounds like love to me.  Overall this movie was pretty terrible and I kept checking to see how much longer I had to endure.  I considered changing the point of this blog to just reviewing episodes of the new Disney show “Dog with a Blog.”  No, really, this is a show and it sounded more enjoyable than the movie I was watching.  However there were a couple quotes I found surprisingly insightful for a movie with such a terribly cynical theme about writing mean observations about classmates leading to you being a spy/editor-in-chief.  The quotes I especially liked follow:

“Holy cats!  A veggie thief!  This needs to be investigated.” – Sure it does.

“Frankie’s cool – American style.  His parents are cool – Chinese style.”  This apparently involves yelling and running a local grocery – thanks for the stereotyping Nickelodeon.

Harriet (rich girl): I hate money.

Sport (the resident poor kid): You’d like it a lot more if you didn’t have any.

(Written on a note ) “Harriet smells.”  I can’t say I’m surprised by hearing this.

 

“You’re an individual and that makes people nervous, and it will your whole life.”  Run-on sentence aside, this was a true statement by Harriet’s nanny, Golly.

Apparently Hey Arnold’s pilot premiered with this movie – this makes the entire movie worthwhile.