in which our heroine reveals that she's totally a tween girl
Over the course of this past weekend, I had what may have been the pleasure and may have been the misfortune of watching two "movies" targeted at nine year-old girls. I use the word "movies" in quotation marks because I'm genuinely unsure if either a direct-to-DVD release entitled My BFF: Best Sleepover Ever!! or the Disney Channel extravaganza High School Musical counts as a film, per se.
Full disclosure: I watched Best Sleepover Ever!! under some duress (read: the six-year old child I nanny for was home sick and obsessed with the DVD). I watched High School Musical entirely of my own (sober) volition. I'm just that cool. And so are Helen and Mia.
Best Sleepover Ever!! concerns five girls (the titular BFFs) who I would guess to be sixth or seventh graders. As the title suggests, they are gathered at the house of two of the girls (sisters and not twins, which I found improbable...who lets their little sister come to a sleepover?) for the best sleepover ever.
Alleged Components of the Best Sleepover Ever:
-Dance party
-Face masks
-Eating fruit and dip
-Truth or Dare
-A game called "Chairs in the Air" which is really just a glorified group lap sit and which you played in theatre class or any group you were a part of that involved "trust-building"
-Pranking nosy little brothers
-Pajama fashion show
-Some sort of fakey Ouija Board business
This DVD is clearly aimed at girls younger than the kids in the "movie", since any actual twelve year-old would find most of these activities (particularly the G-rated game of Truth or Dare) outrageously lame. Strike one. Strike two: the DVD is a treasure trove of gender-norming. When the girls make predictions about themselves, all of them concern who they're going to marry. More troublingly, during the Truth or Dare Segment, the girls had a discussion of what each disliked about her own looks. This conversation was in no way regarded as problematic. I'll get off my Smith high horse in a moment, but that was absolutely inappropriate in a DVD that clearly aimed to project an image of its characters as role models. Strike three? I had to watch this DVD three times on Friday. Although, to be fair, that number pales in comparison to how often I've seen the truly wretched Robots.
Rose called me Friday evening and strongly recommended that I watch High School Musical on its next showing. Oh man. She was right. It was terrible. Ly awesome! The plot made little to no sense, the acting was abysmal, the music redundant and to call the characters one-dimensional would have been high praise. Needless to say, we loved it. A brief plot summary: Gabriella is a school nerd. Troy is a basketball player. Having learned of both their latent musical abilities and their mutual attraction, they want to audition for the school musical (or, as the drama teacher, played by the poorest man's Meryl Streep, calls it, the musicale). However, they are pressured not to by both their friends, who want to maintain the status quo and the creepy twins (improbably named Ryan and Sharpay) who have had the leading roles in every musicale up to now. I think we can all guess how it ends. Awesome thing number one: dance numbers. Awesome thing number two: Sharpay is played by this girl. Awesome thing number three: the following conversation:
Me: You know what this movie reminds me of? That movie where Julia Stiles was in a school musical? And it was a musical version of some Shakespeare play? And maybe Joseph Gordon-Leavitt was in love with her?
Mia: What?
Me: Maybe it was called Next to You?
Mia: Down to You?
Me: No, Down to You was with her and Freddie Prinze Junior and was the worst movie ever. I think it was called Next to You.
Helen: Wasn't Next to You with Melissa Joan Hart? No, wait, that was-
All (in unison): Drive Me Crazy*.
Helen: Are you sure the movie you're thinking of was with Julia Stiles? Was it maybe Kirsten Dunst?
Me: Yes! You're right!
Mia: Crazy/Beautiful?
Me: No, that was where she was crazy. In this one, she sang.
IMDB revealed the name of the movie to be Get Over It! Apparently, it involved Shane West, not Joseph Gordon-Leavitt. I don't know how I transposed the cast of 10 Things I Hate About You onto this movie. Anyways, had I remembered that Shane West was involved, I probably would have confused it with Whatever It Takes. Moral of the story: my knowledge of minor late 90s/early 2000s teen movies in encyclopaedic. Also, troubling.
*: IMDB would later reveal that Next To You was, in fact, the original title of Drive Me Crazy, adding a whole new scary dimension to our brain trust.
Full disclosure: I watched Best Sleepover Ever!! under some duress (read: the six-year old child I nanny for was home sick and obsessed with the DVD). I watched High School Musical entirely of my own (sober) volition. I'm just that cool. And so are Helen and Mia.
Best Sleepover Ever!! concerns five girls (the titular BFFs) who I would guess to be sixth or seventh graders. As the title suggests, they are gathered at the house of two of the girls (sisters and not twins, which I found improbable...who lets their little sister come to a sleepover?) for the best sleepover ever.
Alleged Components of the Best Sleepover Ever:
-Dance party
-Face masks
-Eating fruit and dip
-Truth or Dare
-A game called "Chairs in the Air" which is really just a glorified group lap sit and which you played in theatre class or any group you were a part of that involved "trust-building"
-Pranking nosy little brothers
-Pajama fashion show
-Some sort of fakey Ouija Board business
This DVD is clearly aimed at girls younger than the kids in the "movie", since any actual twelve year-old would find most of these activities (particularly the G-rated game of Truth or Dare) outrageously lame. Strike one. Strike two: the DVD is a treasure trove of gender-norming. When the girls make predictions about themselves, all of them concern who they're going to marry. More troublingly, during the Truth or Dare Segment, the girls had a discussion of what each disliked about her own looks. This conversation was in no way regarded as problematic. I'll get off my Smith high horse in a moment, but that was absolutely inappropriate in a DVD that clearly aimed to project an image of its characters as role models. Strike three? I had to watch this DVD three times on Friday. Although, to be fair, that number pales in comparison to how often I've seen the truly wretched Robots.
Rose called me Friday evening and strongly recommended that I watch High School Musical on its next showing. Oh man. She was right. It was terrible. Ly awesome! The plot made little to no sense, the acting was abysmal, the music redundant and to call the characters one-dimensional would have been high praise. Needless to say, we loved it. A brief plot summary: Gabriella is a school nerd. Troy is a basketball player. Having learned of both their latent musical abilities and their mutual attraction, they want to audition for the school musical (or, as the drama teacher, played by the poorest man's Meryl Streep, calls it, the musicale). However, they are pressured not to by both their friends, who want to maintain the status quo and the creepy twins (improbably named Ryan and Sharpay) who have had the leading roles in every musicale up to now. I think we can all guess how it ends. Awesome thing number one: dance numbers. Awesome thing number two: Sharpay is played by this girl. Awesome thing number three: the following conversation:
Me: You know what this movie reminds me of? That movie where Julia Stiles was in a school musical? And it was a musical version of some Shakespeare play? And maybe Joseph Gordon-Leavitt was in love with her?
Mia: What?
Me: Maybe it was called Next to You?
Mia: Down to You?
Me: No, Down to You was with her and Freddie Prinze Junior and was the worst movie ever. I think it was called Next to You.
Helen: Wasn't Next to You with Melissa Joan Hart? No, wait, that was-
All (in unison): Drive Me Crazy*.
Helen: Are you sure the movie you're thinking of was with Julia Stiles? Was it maybe Kirsten Dunst?
Me: Yes! You're right!
Mia: Crazy/Beautiful?
Me: No, that was where she was crazy. In this one, she sang.
IMDB revealed the name of the movie to be Get Over It! Apparently, it involved Shane West, not Joseph Gordon-Leavitt. I don't know how I transposed the cast of 10 Things I Hate About You onto this movie. Anyways, had I remembered that Shane West was involved, I probably would have confused it with Whatever It Takes. Moral of the story: my knowledge of minor late 90s/early 2000s teen movies in encyclopaedic. Also, troubling.
*: IMDB would later reveal that Next To You was, in fact, the original title of Drive Me Crazy, adding a whole new scary dimension to our brain trust.
posted by Leila at 4:26 PM
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