The Reason People Don't Like Teenagers: Just My Luck Embodies The Worst In Entertainment

The Good: You've got me, it ends?
The Bad: Plot is predictable, Characters, Acting, Soundtrack, Pretty much everything
The Basics: With terrible acting, poor role models/behaviors exhibited and an insipid teen soundtrack, Just My Luck is a loser for all audiences.


Every now and then, I walk right into my favorite library, browse along the DVDs and stop at the first title I do not recognize and I get that movie out. Generally, it takes a lot for me to find something by this method these days. Today, I was in luck and I found a movie I had not heard of that was new, so I got it out and watched it. It was called Just My Luck, features Lindsay Lohan and it makes me wonder if everyone remotely associated with this movie has had their career utterly destroyed. If not, they ought to be.

Ashley lives in Manhattan in a fabulous apartment, does not believe in luck, yet she is always able to catch a cab, rain clouds clear up when she walks outside and the new cute guy she meets (who is, of course, fabulously rich) asks her out and she gets the corporate credit card to plan a fabulous party for the richest music mogul around. Across town, Jake Hardin has terrible luck: his pants tear, he finds a five dollar bill covered in dog poop and his quest to get a c.d. to Damon Phillips, the music mogul, lands him in jail. Jake makes his way into the fabulous party, kisses Ashley and their luck reverses, allowing Jake to become successful representing his band and sending Ashley into a chaotic life that involves losing everything she had.

My first problem with this movie was I could not figure out who the intended audience is. The movie is PG-13, but characters mention erotic massage, celebrate with champagne and work at jobs that require at least a rudimentary college education. As an adult, the movie is lightyears too stupid for me. The average joke involves falling down, vomiting when one is nervous or getting punched in the face by the butch woman in your jail cell. So, it's clearly not intended for an adult audience (I think we need a new rating system from the MPAA which will indicate the level to which a movie will insult the intelligence of an adult), but it has some dialogue that is apparently pushing it above the age 13 threshold. It this garbage truly what 13 - 18 year olds are watching these days?!

This movie does wonderful things for young women in the 13 - 18 age group. It reinforces such beautiful stereotypes as to how girls act (upon finding out she'll be taking a helicopter with her boyfriend to catch the jet to go to the game they're watching, she giggles and declares, "This is so going into my diary!" - that might be a paraphrase, I'm not searching the disc for that line!), reminds girls of the importance of wearing underwear, and encourages young women to enter their adulthood and engage in shouting at whoever will listen when they encounter an obstacle. An argument could be made that Just My Luck also encourages young women to improvise in order to wow the businessworld, but the actual process of Ashley improvising and succeeding with Damon is not shown.

This movie has no entertainment value. Virtually every line in the movie is terrible and that it took five people to write this piece of garbage boggles me. I. Marlene King, Amy Harris, Jonathan Bernstein, Mark Blackwell, and James Greer cannot, apparently, come up with a decent line or original concept between themselves. There was not a single gag in the movie that I did not see coming. My cats saw them coming, that's how obvious every joke in this movie was.

The characters are all terrible. Not one of them pops, not one of them is remotely empathetic. Instead, they are vacuous, spoiled, superstitious (though most claim not to be) and so poorly conceived that when one of the two protagonists switches luck, everyone associated with them switches luck as well. To wit, there's no decent explanation for why Maggie's song, which was scheduled to be covered by McFly - the band - would be dropped when Ashley's luck changes.

So, in addition to being a pointless debate on the force of luck - it's essentially treated as a parasite or communicable disease here that is transmitted by kissing - Just My Luck has not a single character that is worth watching. Instead, the film is a painful reminder that young people are being set up for . . . you know what, at the end of this movie, I'm not even sure what young people are being set up for! Are our 13 - 18 year olds perceptive enough to become as vacuous as the characters in this movie? Or can they not even aim that high?

It's hard to guess. What's not hard to evaluate here is the acting. It's terrible. Through and through this is a reminder that young people are not inherently talented. Director Donald Petrie seems to have gone out of his way to find the worst actors possible. So bad was the acting in Just My Luck that I was astounded to learn that McFly was a real band. Their amateur sound, which populates this movie, was so bad I could only figure that they were terrible actors cast poorly as musicians. As it is, they're just poor musicians being used as actors. This reminds us that artists often have different talents and a musical career should not be taken as a license to act.

Chris Pine and Lindsay Lohan (Jake and Ashley, respectively) have no on-screen chemistry and Pine's performance is, at best, derivative of Kyle Howard (in his role from Grosse Point). At best, it's stiff and utterly lacking in charisma and/or comic timing.

Lindsay Lohan is equally bad as Ashley. She has no real screen presence or charisma in this movie. Sure, she's made to look good, but she does not perform as anything even remotely close to entertaining here.

Back before the age of focus groups and target demographics, the industry was geared toward adults (okay, maybe we're forced to go all the way back to when books were the dominant medium of entertainment). Before things became geared toward children, they either were exposed to what the adults were exposed to (places in the U.S. that were literate had more literate - i.e. higher levels of diction and vocabulary - people) or they went without. Just My Luck makes the argument for having kids go without until they are mature enough to "get" adult concepts.

In recent days, I've seen some decent movies with young people. Ghost World (reviewed here!) and Dreamland (reviewed here!) were both superior movies with young people as protagonists. I don't know what either is rated, but they're bound to be better than this drecht for your young adults.

For other films with Chris Pine, check out my reviews of:
Star Trek
Smokin’ Aces
The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement

1/10

For other film reviews, check out the Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Bobby: Another Big Cast Movie I Wanted To Like More

The Good: Awesome cast, Some decent acting, Some interesting characters, DVD extras
The Bad: Most of the characters are not developed enough, Use of archival footage/direction
The Basics: Awkwardly combining archived footage and newly directed material, the fateful day of RFK's primary victory in California is recreated in a painstaking and painful way.


Sometimes movies that have huge casts know how to use those big casts. They wow the audience with their performances with sheer force of numbers. So, for example, critics often overlook the magnificent Cradle Will Rock (reviewed here!) because the caliber of the actors in it is so high as to overwhelm the audience and for as hard as I was on Mystic River (reviewed here!), the main reason was because all of the actors were so extraordinary that their performances only lived up to the high expectations of greatness from such a group. In fact, the last movie I saw with a massive, well-known cast that truly disappointed me was A Prairie Home Companion (reviewed here!). And then there was Bobby, a film I was excited about and just caught on DVD.

On June 6th, 1968 in Los Angeles California, the California primary is heating up as a contest between Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Senator McCarthy and the victory speech for RFK is set for that night at the Ambassador Hotel. As the day progresses, workers, performers and patrons of the Ambassador Hotel prepare for the arrival of Kennedy and there are numerous conflicts and collisions that occur, prompting actions and reactions. The people spending the day going about their lives include kitchen help, notably Jose and Miguel - Latino workers compelled to work a double shift - and black chef Edward Robinson. When Timmons fails to allow the workers to go vote, his boss Paul fires him. Paul is not having the best day as this is the day he and his mistress, Angela, part ways and his wife Miriam finds out about his indiscretion. Retired doorman John Casey sits in the lounge playing chess with those who will play with him, like Nelson. In the hotel's lounge, Virginia Fallon is set to give her final performance and leave town after introducing RFK.

Outside the immediate politics of the hotel, though still encompassed within the walls of the structure, there are a number of personal and political machinations at work. Fallon's husband Tim has chosen this day to leave Virginia. The establishment is overrun with campaign workers for Robert F. Kennedy, like Jimmy and Cooper who spend the day getting high instead of working. They get LSD from Fisher and spend the day tripping. This is unlike Wade and Dwayne, who have spent the day working to create a victory for RFK in the primary. This is the day that Diane is marrying William so he will be sent to Germany instead of Vietnam. It is also the day RFK supporters Jack and Samantha arrive to see the future president.

The recent success of such movies as Crash (reviewed here!) that employ large casts with characters involved in intertwining storylines have encouraged other writers and directors to explore the same with their own ideas. Bobby is written and directed by Emilio Estevez, who also appears in the movie as Tim Fallon. The problem here is that while Estevez certainly captures the chaos and scope of the Ambassador Hotel on that June day, the character elements are sacrificed to fit all of the stories in.

In short, because there are essentially twenty one integral characters (none of whom are Bobby Kennedy) with at least three other recurring characters that try to squeeze in for time, none of them have the chance to fully develop and be explored. Instead, they are almost all given the short run of screentime.

Which leads me to one of the biggest criticisms of Bobby; the title. Titles, any writer will tell you, are incredibly important and Bobby is a misnomer. This is not a film about Robert F. Kennedy. While it certainly does tell the story of one of the most fateful days in American history, it almost completely neglects the real stories of Robert F. Kennedy's day. This is a story about the Ambassador Hotel, building up to RFK's arrival, it's not about Bobby Kennedy. Certainly everyone in the hotel is there directly or indirectly because of Kennedy, but he is an ancillary character in the story.

Moreover, Kennedy appears in the film through use of historical clips, many from news reports using archive footage. Kennedy, Mike Wallace and another news anchor appear in grainy clips that illustrate the reality of the day. Unfortunately, Estevez combines these clips with the main footage of the movie, pulling the viewer out of narrative as he tells it. Instead of relegating the quotes and clips with RFK to a prologue and epilogue, Bobby uses footage throughout that integrates poorly with the actual movie.

Nowhere is this more problematic than near the climax of the film. While Kennedy is on stage in clips that are wonderfully restored for the film, he is flanked by historical figures who the viewer have been watching for the past hour and a half. Yes, Estevez clumsily integrates footage that includes the real Wade - for example - and for those looking at the continuity, this is a terrible attempt to reconcile the movie with itself. To make clear, Estevez uses footage from reality and tries to put it into the movie, usually when RFK is involved and the footage does not match in terms of quality nor composition, making the movie very poorly assembled in the end.

Estevez should have used his RFK stand in Dave Fraunces - or found another actor - to recreate RFK footage for the movie as opposed to sloppily sticking in old clips.

That said, what we do see about the various characters is enough to make this film work at least one viewing. The dialogue between Jose, Miguel and Edward is phenomenal. Rarely in American cinema is there discussion of interethnic dynamics that calls it as it sees it, documenting the tensions between blacks and latinos. Edward's conversation about how he lost his anger is amazing and very compelling. Despite how little screentime he has, he resonates as a worthwhile and intriguing character.

Similarly, the weird relationship between soon-to-be-spouses Diane and William is awkward, stilted and in every way wonderful. When Diane quietly declares that she would have married the two people from her high school that recently were killed in Vietnam if it would have saved their lives is telling and sad. William's understanding that Diane's willingness to marry him is not necessarily based on love is sad and touching.

The character that is most developed and least overstated is John Casey, the former doorman. He is quite simply lonely and retired, occupying a couch in the lobby playing chess in order to stave off utter loneliness and lethargy. His mind is sharp and he has wonderful memories of the Ambassador Hotel, but he is a man who had nowhere to go in retirement and ends up desperate for any interaction with people.

Casey is played with wonderful simplicity by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins has one of his most understated roles here and he creates a character with both quiet dignity and desperation as he waits for the day to end. I've never seen Hopkins played bewildered as well as he does in the climax of this film.

Sadly, most of the other actors do not have the chance to shine as much as they deserve. Almost completely neglected is Martin Sheen whose bit part in Bobby makes the viewer wonder why he took it (though supporting his son is a good enough reason for me!). And while Laurence Fishburne is wonderfully cast as Edward Robinson, his performance is nothing we have not seen from him in, say, The Matrix. He plays the sage quite well, but here he does nothing to impress the viewer with his range.

Neglected even more is one of my favorites, William H. Macy, who wowed me in Magnolia (reviewed here!). Macy plays the hotel's manager, Paul and his role is little more than a cameo at key moments, a clear underuse of his talents. Also appearing with minimal screentime are Elijah Wood, Lindsay Lohan, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Emilio Estevez. And while it's wonderful to see Freddy Rodriguez in a film, his part is nothing terribly challenging or different from his signature role in Six Feet Under.

I will note that Joshua Jackson stood out as Wade. Jackson has a seriousness to him that allows him to perfectly embody a young aide to a politician. He seems like a manager and he has a dignity that I would not have anticipated from him.

On the DVD presentation, one of the coolest features is a panel discussion with people who were actually at the Ambassador Hotel the night in question. Their conversation is insightful and it has a strength to it that wonderfully tells the story of reality from a different perspective after Estevez's production is over.

It is only the strength of what is revealed by characters in what little time they are given, combined with the strength of the acting when the actors are permitted to present their talents and the decent DVD bonuses that save this otherwise mediocre film. Sadly, while I watched, I continued to wait for it to become extraordinary and was a little let down when the best it achieved was adequate. Recommended for a viewing, as opposed to purchasing for a permanent collection.

For other works with Freddy Rodriguez, check out my takes on:
Six Feet Under
Havoc
Payback

6/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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After Years Of Being Encouraged To View,I Sit Down And Fail To Enjoy The Holiday.

The Good: Moments (infrequent) of acting, Moments of charm
The Bad: Utterly predictable, Much of the character elements, Light on DVD bonus features, Acting
The Basics: In The Holiday, Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz lead a decent cast, almost universally performing poorly, in a boring, terribly predictable romantic comedy.


My mother has been on me to watch The Holiday for the last two years. In fact, it might be the very first movie she finished watching and insisted right away that I sit down and watch. I have been busy, between writing novels and reviewing movies that I want to review, but lately a break in my schedule and supply ran out, so I decided to give my mother's beloved movie a chance.

Nancy Meyers, who directed Something's Gotta' Give (reviewed here!) and What Women Want (reviewed here!), two movies I found terribly average, returns to write and direct this Christmas-themed romantic (alleged) comedy. I was largely underwhelmed by the movie, most notably by the acting. It seemed like all of the actors had moments they were decent in, until the moments they were used in familiar ways (save Kate Winslet, who was fine throughout). But for the most part, this is a predictable, obvious romance movie with predictable pairings and a pretty obvious resolution.

Iris Simpkins is working with the love of her life at a publication where she writes about society's great weddings. She is hopelessly in love - in an unrequited way - with Jasper Bloom, with whom she flirts and swaps Christmas gifts up until the moment that he abruptly announces he is engaged to be married to someone else. Devastated, Iris looks to flee. This, conveniently enough, occurs more or less at the same time that movie trailer maker Amanda Woods breaks up with her long-term boyfriend for an affair she suspected he had and soon confirms for her. Looking to get out of Los Angeles, she finds a place in Surrey, England, to swap houses with and the person she is swapping with happens to be Iris. As Iris goes to Los Angeles to a much bigger, luxurious place, Amanda finds herself in a cozy cottage in Surrey where there is nothing to do but wrestle with her personal demons.

In Amanda's house and neighborhood, Iris encounters the film composer Miles, but seems even more drawn to the elderly writer in the neighborhood, Arthur Abbott, who she rescues while he is wandering one day. As Iris avoids Jasper, she helps Arthur get into shape for an award's ceremony in his honor and discovers Miles is charming and less attached than he initially seems. Amanda, thrilled to be away from Ethan, finds herself in the company of Graham, who appears to be something of a womanizer . . . until Amanda meets the women in his life and realizes things have become complicated between them!

The Holiday starts slow, develops to boring and ends lackluster. In fact, the only parts of the movie worth watching are the moments between Iris and Arthur. Here's why: those parts of the movie use the cast in the best possible way and eliminate most of the problems the film possesses. They move, they have character elements that make sense (sort of) and the actors and acting in them are decent. Viewed out of context of the rest of the movie, even the problematic aspects of those scenes work.

Arguably the best moment of the film, the moment that actually has something original and different to say, in The Holiday comes in one of the scenes between Arthur and Iris. That moment has Arthur evaluating Iris as the "best friend" role in her own life. It is a decent monologue and a great concept and Iris latches onto it. The problem is, it doesn't fit Iris's character. Arthur gets it right; she is not the leading lady in her own life, but she isn't even the best friend; she is a non-speaking supernumerary (background performer). Iris is such a nonentity and there is so little interest paid in the way she is painted from the outset that her portions are painful and boring to watch up until the time that Arthur comes into the movie to share the screen with her.

Romantic comedies do not necessarily have to trade on surprise, so predictability in a movie like The Holiday is not necessarily devastating. But in this case, everything is predictable and it is unpleasant how simple the writer and director assumes the audience is. While the mood at the outset is interesting and appropriately painful, at least in the Iris/Jasper relationship, the film soon fails to trade on even that intrigue. As a result, Miles and Iris come together simply by the virtue that they are proximate to one another at the holidays. Neither one seems emotionally intelligent. Come to think of it, neither does Graham, who latches right on to Amanda, who has just ended a five-year relationship.

In the movie filled with people who are otherwise smart, but appear to be emotional idiots, the least interesting characters are Amanda Woods and Ethan. Amanda excising Ethan works, but the resulting need to get away makes little sense to those schooled in the way of psychology hardly seems real. For sure, there is no one way to react to trauma and change, but Amanda gets rid of Ethan, cuts a perfect trailer (which was one of the problems Ethan had with her) and flees rather than bury herself in her work. If the movie had even had a single scene where she wore out her workers cutting films before she was forced to take a vacation, the character would have worked much, much better.

That said, the only truly interesting man in the movie is Arthur, largely because he is the character that seems to be best acted (an irony, considering that Arthur is probably much closer to actor Eli Wallach than any of the other actors are to their characters). The problematic aspects of the movie are all exploded by the acting. Edward Burns and Rufus Sewell are strangely bland in their roles as rejected male love interests. Jude Law and Jack Black both have moments where they are decent, but those moments fade ridiculously quickly when both of them fall back on their standards. Law is fine up until the moment where he is expected to give the Jude Law Penetrating Look #5 that is supposed to make all of the women swoon and . . . completely does not fit his character of Graham.

Similarly, Jack Black is either stuck into his same niche or the part was altered when he was cast or the role of Miles was written with him in mind. I write this because Black is great up until a scene in a video store with Winslet. Miles - up until that point - has been friendly, but serious and grounded and the role had Jack Black actually acting. But in that scene, he begins singing various scores from movies and his character never recovers from that. Yes, it is after that that the scene from the trailer with the "brushing the boob" line comes up and that is a perfectly Jack Black delivery. Unfortunately, it is not in character for Miles so much as it is Black.

At least Jack Black is given the moments to play before his character or performance turn south. Cameron Diaz is not even given that chance. Instead, she starts off with the same bug-eyed, momentarily spastic performance she has become known for and she never pulls herself out of it. This is not even for a moment a stretch for her as an actress and it is reminiscent of several prior roles of hers.

The only actress who seems to hold it together is Kate Winslet, who is decent as Iris, though the character is far more boring than Arthur or Miles ever admits. Winslet is good, but the role is not great.

This is, perhaps, emblematic of the entire movie. The Holiday is a ridiculously simple pitch concept: two women swap houses and fall in love with people in their new setting as a result. The problem is it never becomes more than that and it is not a great concept even with that. On DVD, there are previews for other movies and a commentary track with writer/director Nancy Meyers that I was not bored or interested enough to subject myself to. There are plenty of other movies out there I would rather devote my time and energy to.

For other works with Eli Wallach, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Mystic River
Keeping The Faith

4.5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Endings In Mediocrity; A Prairie Home Companion: The Motion Picture

The Good: Moments where the dry wit is funny, Casting (I suppose)
The Bad: Dull, Little in the way of character or character development, Dull
The Basics: As the radio show A Prairie Home Companion winds down, performers on it talk backstage, embodying the humor of Garrison Keillor.


In my travels, I've encountered a certain snobbery from NPR listeners who almost universally assume that those who do not enjoy the dry wit ramblings of radio entertainer Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion simply do not understand him. There's a highbrow assumption that if one does not find the show funny, the lack of humor is in poor, ignorant listener who does not appreciate classy, subtle humor. I "get" Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion's humor but it just doesn't entertain me. When I recently spelled Keillor's name wrong in my panning of Marie Antoinette (reviewed here!) and I was corrected by no less than three fellow reviewers within 12 hours, I decided my penance would be to sit through the cinematic version of A Prairie Home Companion.

Set on the night of the final episode of A Prairie Home Companion, the radio show is taping before a live theatrical audience as they present down-home stories of living in Wisconsin (though Lake Wobegon is never directly mentioned). While G.K. does his monologues and fake commercials, entertainers from the show talk backstage about the demise of the radio program. As well, security guard Noir is hunting a woman in a white trench coat who he believes might save the show. As the night winds down, old tensions between G.K. and ex-lover Yolanda Johnson flare, lewd cowboy entertainers Dusty and Left irk the standards and practices director, and Noir encounters the woman in white.

I "get" the idea of this film of A Prairie Home Companion; while the actual show is going on on-stage, the performers are telling stories and singing and such to present a parallel show backstage. While G.K. tells the stories up front to the radio audience, the film audience is treated to a similar show. It's not a terribly complicated concept. The thing is, it's not terribly exciting, either.

It takes a lot to make a radio show interesting to watch. It's why it's somewhat baffling that Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern and others have simply stuck a camera in their studios at different points when making their radio presentations and pretended that makes the radio show a television series. It does not. It's watching a guy make radio. And it's about that entertaining.

A Prairie Home Companion, this movie, is not that unentertaining. Instead, the parallel stories go a long way to solving the problem of making a film out of people talking into microphones. Here, instead, the movie wisely neglects the theater performance as much as possible in favor of the backstage activity for as much of the movie as possible.

But therein, too, are the challenges of the movie; the backstage "antics" (if they can be called that) are the embodiment of the dry wit of the radio program. So, while Keillor describes mid-westerners in dry tones with subtle wit and little affect, backstage we see their antics. And for the most part, they're just entertainers telling one another stories in their particular idiom. So, for example, there's nothing extraordinary about Lola Johnson, Yolanda's daughter, as she talks in unemotive tones about her suicide poetry. And the very stereotypical way her aunt Rhonda and mother simply talk over her with generic feel-good sentiments falls as flat in the actualization as it does in Keillor's routine.

So, it's something we GET, it's just not something that's terribly entertaining and, in the litmus test for a movie, it's not interesting to watch. That's important for understanding why A Prairie Home Companion (the film) fails; it simply does not utilize the medium in a way that takes advantage of what cinematic presentation can do. I shudder to think of what the commentary track is like; with actors talking over people talking. I mean, truly, what do you do on a commentary track about a movie about people sitting around telling stories?! It must be surreal, listening to people tell stories about people telling stories.

My point here is that the film captures little entertainment value of the live performance of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion. In fact, the only things we SEE that we would not have heard of the performance are G.K. ad-libbing his way through a monologue on duct tape, hindered by the improvisations of Yolanda, and Yolanda's expressions of anger and hurt toward G.K. as her old feelings resurface.

I did laugh once during this movie and that was when G.K. is talking to Lola about her conception, which was based on him abandoning her father at a rest stop, where he met Yolanda and had a chance encounter. He dryly declares, "You're the best mistake I never made." It's not enough to justify the 104 other minutes of the movie.

As for the acting, it's nothing to shout out about. The acting is more a function of decent casting than actual performances in this film. So, for example, if I was going to make a movie with singing cowboys telling one another dirty jokes, Woody Harrelson would seem to be a natural choice for one of them. And he fits the role, but it's nothing that challenges our expectations of Harrelson or him as an actor. Similarly, Lily Tomlin as a country singer and Kevin Kline as an out-of-work gumshoe all fit. No one is better cast for his role (save Keillor himself, essentially playing himself) than Tommy Lee Jones who enters the film late as the axeman, the new company's representative come to kill the show.

So, it's nothing new or special and it barely has the entertainment value of the radio show. It's a shame that Robert Altman's final directoral outing was something so limited. Then again, with its pervasive theme of endings, perhaps it is appropriate.

For other works with Maya Rudolph, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Bridesmaids
50 First Dates
As Good As It Gets

5/10

For other movie reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Say What You Will About It, Mean Girls Is Close-Enough To Perfect To Rave About!

The Good: Funny, Good character development, Decent directoral style, Generally good acting, Social commentary
The Bad: Minutia
The Basics: Funny and near-perfect, Mean Girls lives up to its hype as a wonderful comedy about high school cliques and those who challenge them.


For those who do not read my many movie reviews, it takes a lot for me to rate a film a ten out of ten, but there are occasional films that might not be absolutely perfect that get very close to that rating. Mean Girls is one of those films.

Truth be told, I had been hearing positive hype about Mean Girls for years. Had I known it was directed by Mark Waters, who bored me with one of the worst films in recent years, Ghost Of Girlfriends Past (reviewed here!) and left me underwhelmed with Just Like Heaven, I probably would not have been as excited about taking in the movie, regardless of the hype. Fortunately, while going through my wife's DVD collection to find a movie we could watch for the night, I was psyched to find she had Mean Girls! And watching it, Waters redeemed himself for his other movies. Mean Girls lives up to its hype as a wonderful comedy with actual social commentary, making its points well with humor and style.

Cady Heron was homeschooled by her parents, as she was raised in the wilds of Africa and at age sixteen is sent off to public high school in the midwest. There, Cady is befriended by the outcast Janis Ian and her gay friend, Damian. Janis tries to help Cady navigate the cliques, but despite her best efforts, Cady is noticed by the Plastics. The Plastics are the junior girls who represent the most popular, elite and mean clique at the school. When Regina George allows Cady into the Plastics, Janis encourages her so that Janis can get the dirt on the Plastics and break up the powerful Junior trio.

This plan appeals to Cady when she finds herself instantly attracted to Aaron, who is Regina's ex-boyfriend. Dating ex's of the clique members is strictly prohibited, a fact which leaves Cady disappointed and willing to scheme against Regina. To stop Cady, Regina begins making moves on Aaron - while cheating on him - and Cady tries to win over Aaron, destroy Regina and avoid being a mathlete. Regina, however, soon learns of Cady's duplicity when Aaron breaks up with her and seeks to ruin Cady.

What Mean Girls does so well is capture the look, feel and tensions of high school, while making commentaries that are more adult than childish. Peripheral characters, like Regina's mother who tries desperately to be a part of her daughter's clique, garner a great number of laughs which makes for a much richer movie; not all of the pressure is on Cady to get the laughs. In fact, Cady plays the straightman to virtually every other character and as a result, it is easy to empathize with her. She, like the older viewers, is detached from the society of the high school. As a result, she is the ideal vehicle for the fish-out-of-water type comedy that makes up Mean Girls.

This is done quite creatively when Waters and writers Rosalind Wiseman and Tina Fey illustrate Cady's viewpoint; she juxtaposes animal behavior she witnessed in Africa with behavior she sees in the high school. These occasional flights of fancy throughout the movie might cause viewers to recall Ally McBeal and the analogy is not a bad one, as there is at least one moment where Cady imagines something that is taken back seconds after it happens that is not the result of any sense of social commentary. Still, watching the performers in the film suddenly begin prowling around like wild animals and leap upon one another shakes up the movie when it finds itself in danger of slowing down.

In addition, the writers shake up the traditional high school teen movie by defying some of the paradigms, most notably in how Cady eliminates the competition with Regina as leader of the Plastics. Cady seeks to simple take Regina down a peg without realizing what effect that is most likely to have and there is a wonderful moment where Cady ends up as the new alpha and because the character has become so corrupted by her plan at that point, this does not phase her (her friend, Janis, makes this explicit and it works wonderfully in the film).

What works as well is the way Janis Ian and Cady play off one another; Janis is motivated by her own desire for revenge for a past incident and she uses Cady much the way Regina uses Aaron. Ironically, both Janis and Regina react similarly when their pawns (Cady and Aaron, respectively) rebel. As well, while young people might instantly see the Plastics as antagonists (or desirable, for those so programmed), older viewers are likely to see the high school layout and see that this is just one clique among many and not be as judgmental in the way the writers and directors hope we will be.

But what fans are equally likely to enjoy is the fact that the movie is genuinely funny. The dialogue is wonderful and both captures the young dialect and comments on it. Near the very beginning there is a great moment when Cady and Regina are talking and Regina uses "shut up!" as a reactive colloquialism and Cady stares at her blank-faced and says, "I didn't say anything." It's funny and well-timed.

Mean Girls is arguably known best as a Lindsay Lohan vehicle and this film does give the bright-eyed young woman her chance to shine. She rises to the occasion and delivers a performance that is surprisingly mature and also able to keep a fresh sense of comic timing to it. She is able to deliver an appropriately quizzical look that sells her character perfectly and her pauses and deadpan deliveries keep the movie funny.

Lohan is not the only talent in the movie, though. Amanda Seyfried has one of the best deliveries as the dimwitted Plastic, Karen. She plays the fool perfectly and she plays off Lacey Chabert's Gretchen wonderfully. Lizzie Caplan plays her usual outsider character as Janis Ian, but she is unrelenting in Mean Girls, giving her performance a darker edge than many of her other roles. And Rachel McAdam's performance as Regina is so good that it made it clear how she was cast for The Time Traveler's Wife (reviewed here!)!

The adult cast is led by Saturday Night Live alums Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, and Amy Poehler, which makes sense as this is a Lorne Michael production. Poehler gets to do her usual over-the-top schtick as Regina's mother and her sense of physical comedy is wonderful. By contrast, Meadows carries a great deal of his humor with deadpan, more subtle deliveries. Fey mixes a more serious role as Cady's teacher, Ms. Norbury, with a few out-of-school scenes where she is able to play the social-awkward card.

The mix is wonderful and the result is a strong comedy that has great repeatability for teens and adults alike. When it is not making social comedy, it is funny and when the humor fades, it actually makes one care about the characters on screen. What more could one ask for?

For other works with Lizzy Caplan, be sure to visit my reviews of:
New Girl - Season 1
Hot Tub Time Machine
True Blood - Season 1
Cloverfield
Orange County
Freaks And Geeks

9/10

Check out other film reviews by me at my Movie Review Index Page!

© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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