If you didn't know the plot going in... that fourteen-year-old Sheila is an unwanted orphan who'd gone through a string of foster parents and is now "trying out for" a couple that could be her very last chance... she'd seem like any other girl her age: Bratty. Moody. Angry. Pouting. Shouting... Favoring friendly dad over competitive mom...
Basically, GIRL ON APPROVAL is about a normal bad girl of this age, and yet the plot (more a situation) adds enough suspense and motivation for it to really matter, but not only for the kid...
Parents Rachel Roberts and James Maxwell, who'd lost their daughter and raising two young boys, wind up at each other's throat when this bad seed makes their domestic suburban life a living hell. From cutting up furniture with a pair of coveted scissors to smashing things on the kitchen floor, the acting of young Annette Whiteley is strong and effective if one-note-grouchy as she resembles an owl peaking through a messy nest of hair (looking as if she'd be the tomboy bratty sister of Brit character-actress Anna Massay)...
And yet, while not a classic beauty, she's pretty cute too, and in one "street walking" scene, you can not only see her possible future very clearly, but what risque direction this movie could have gone, and with the young actress perfectly suited for the transition...
So everything is up to the parents (initially "hired" by friendly, pretty civil servant Ellen McIntosh); and with Rachel Roberts in the leading adult role there's a good stir of drama and melodrama; the difference being whatever seems more like an American Afterschool Special a decade later... Which is just the point of the British New Wave: No matter what the subject, they're at least a decade ahead.