Get A Clue

Encouraged by her columnist dad, Lexy (Lindsay Lohan) writes an article about her two favorite teachers, Mr. Walker (Ian Gomez) and Miss Dawson (Amanda Plummer), for the school paper. A metropolitan news service picks up the human interest story, the Lexy isn't able to enjoy her newfound success for long: The camera-shy Mr. Walker disappears! When the cops fish the vanished professor’s car out of the river and declare him dead, Lexy and her fellow journalists decide there must be more to the story. While Jennifer (Brenda Song) and Gabe (Ali Mukkadam) tackle the surveillance end of the teens’ investigation, Lexy joins forces with Brooklynite Jack (Bug Hall), the paper’s editor, who initially mistakes her for a dilettante. Given that these adolescent snoops have more energy than the NYPD, they soon discover that Mr. Walker did not drown. Cornered by his students, Walker relates a sorry tale of corporate embezzlement, blackmail and borrowed identities. Back in 1997 and under his real name, Nicolas Petrossian, Walker was working as an accountant for a shifty CEO named Granville (Charles Shaughnessy). Granville committed corporate theft to the tune of ten million dollars and pinned in on Petrossian, but the stolen bonanza disappeared and the innocent accountant renamed himself Walker and went on the lam. Granville, who suspects Walker of having double crossed him, has been futilely tracking his pigeon even since. And then he spotted the photograph that accompanied Lexy’s newspaper article… Are Lexy and her classmates a match for Arizona’s white-collar wizard of frauds? Exposing Granville involves a dangerous Manhattan hotel rendezvous that leads to a gem of a solution.

In her younger years, Lohan had an endearingly winsome pep that contrasts unfavorably with her later incarnation. She singlehandedly energizes this tween-oriented adventure, which updates the traditional formula with technological geegaws and contemporary teen patois. leave a comment --Robert Pardi