Eleven-year-old aspiring spy and writer Harriet M. Welsch lives a privileged life in New York City with her parents, Violetta and Ben, and her nanny, Catherine "Ole Golly," in whom she confides.

Harriet and her best friends, Simon "Sport" Rocque and Janie Gibbs, are enemies with a snobby classmate, editor of the sixth-grade newspaper, bully, and class president Marion Hawthorne.

She begins reading aloud Harriet's comments about her friends and peers, such as how she suspects Janie will grow up to be "a total nutcase" and criticizing Sport's father's low earnings.

During art class, Marion and company pour blue paint over Harriet as revenge for writing things about them in her notebook.

She exacts revenge in several ways: by exposing that Marion's father left their family for his secretary, by cutting off a chunk of Laura's hair, by sabotaging Janie's science experiment, and by humiliating Sport with a picture of him in a maid's outfit.

At the opening of the 6th-grade pageant, Janie, Sport, and Harriet set off a stink bomb as all the students, teachers, and audience dance to James Brown's "Get Up Offa That Thing."

[2] The film went on to gross a total of $26,570,048 by November 10, 1996, and is considered a modest box office success, earning back more than double its $12 million budget.

The site's consensus: "Harriet the Spy is a rapid-fire mystery movie that doesn't have much to offer beyond the two decent lead performances.

[6] Rita Kempley of The Washington Post was critical of the film, deeming it a "tedious" adaptation of the source novel, adding: "Harriet the Spy isn't really a story, but a dark slice of this ruminative child's inner life.

"[8] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, a self-proclaimed fan of the novel, wrote that the film "has its sticky, Afterschool Special side (the ending is way too pat), but at its best it’s like a Welcome to the Dollhouse for preadolescents.

What Fitzhugh’s book had, and what the movie gets, is the glee and neurotic terror of a kid lurching into adult consciousness, learning just how dangerous that notebook we all carry around in our heads really is.

"[9] John Anderson of the Los Angeles Times also commented on the film's darker elements, writing that it is "fun, yes, but [it] isn't afraid to expose the nastiness of youth or the offhanded cruelty of one girl's ego.

"[10] Barbara Shulgasser of The San Francisco Examiner dismissed the film, describing the protagonist as "the kind of kid I'm not looking forward to meeting as a grownup...

While the well-loved novel was apparently about the admirable battle a kid must wage in order to become an artist in the face of peer disapproval, the movie seems to be about a mean-spirited tyke who has no scruples.