Here's the story: A girl wants to experience freedom from being the daughter of a president. The president, being a caring and understanding father that he is, devised a way to sort of give in to his daughter's wish without putting her safety at risk. He provided her a secret service agent who would befriend her and take care of her without her knowing that he is a secret service agent. However, the two fell in love with each other. Eventually, the girl learned the truth about the identity of the boy she fell in love with and walked away from him. Again, being an understanding father that he is, he planned a way for his daughter and the boy to be together for a happy ending.
I know it isn't the most original story that you've heard. But what is the possibility of two different movies from two different movie outfits being shown in the same year to have exactly the same plot? In Hollywood, there's 100% chance! Remember 1997's "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano"? 1998's "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon"? Case in point this time: 2004's "Chasing Liberty" and "First Daughter". It seemed like that these two (and the rest of them) were bought from one scripts factory. Only that the owner didn't say that he sold two copies of the same script. The film makers only learned about it when they were both doing the movie already and it was too late to put them on shelves. They just hoped that theirs was better than the other.
Both films were slated to be shown last January 2004 but Fox's "First Daughter" backed out and was moved to September. Hey, what good would it do, right? One would bound to suffer at the box-office if they would be pitted against each other. (Later on though, both bombed at the tills.) What's more was that they were even both called "First Daughter" before one managed to change it.
However, was one really better than the other? Oh, yes, indeed!
I enjoyed "Chasing Liberty" the first time I saw it on screen. It had enough romantic scenes that would make you want to cuddle with your date. It may be a teeny-bopper movie but there was no pretension that it wasn't. It was fun and entertaining. Mandy Moore and Matthew Goode (who was very adorable!) may not have the best chemistry on screen but they somehow pulled the romance off! Add to that was the side story of two other secret agents played by Jeremy Piven and Annabelle Sciorra.
This movie has its charms that one could recommend to see during a romantic movie night.
"First Daughter" was a complete waste of time and money! I didn't try seeing on screen because I felt that it was crap-ish. One movie of the same plot was enough for me to spend my hard-earned money on. And just the lack of anything good to rent upon, I took this video.
As far as I'm concern, Katie Holmes is still Joey of "Dawson's Creek" playing a president's daughter. She still had those cutesy moves and pouty lips. If Mandy and Matthew managed somehow to have chemistry on screen, Katie and Mark Blucas didn't! They were too wrong for each other physically and romantically on screen.
This movie took on the fairy tale-like way of storytelling. And that was just it. A crappy fairy tale that needs to be forgotten and not be told to children! It was charmless!
How could director Forest Whitaker claimed that this was better than "Chasing Liberty"? Was he out of his mind?
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