Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)February 19th, 2004
CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2004 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Lindsay Lohan is no Hilary Duff. Marvelous in FREAKY FRIDAY and in THE PARENT TRAP, Lohan is a wonderful actress in her own right, but she comes across as way too smart to try to channel Hilary Duff's hilarious ditziness. In the leaden CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN, Lohan plays a Lizzie McGuire type of character called Lola, who is stuck with a really lame script. The "Lizzie McGuire" series has something of a universal appeal, but CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN is for pre-teen girls only -- that is, if their parents can ignore the movie's questionable messages about lying to your parents and your friends and idolizing drunken rock stars. Still, you could forgive the movie's many flaws if it were just funny, which it almost never is.
When we meet Lola, whose real name is Mary, she tells us, "In my family, I'm a flamingo in a flock of pigeons," which is about as insightful or humorous as the film ever gets. Lola, a blabbermouth who is obsessed with explaining her life to us in constant voice-over, is a budding actress who is forced to move from her beloved and sophisticated Manhattan to -- horror of horrors -- the beautifully lush, tree-lined suburbs of New Jersey. Always dressing bizarrely like a flower child from the '60s, she's a 15-year-old who tries her best to be different. Once at her new school, she immediately bonds with Ella (Alison Pill), the nearest nerd, and picks a friendly fight with Carla, the school's reigning queen bee. None of the casting works. Megan Fox, for example, as Carla, is never nasty enough to be worth hating. She's a cardboard cutout of a villain.
The movie attempts to be cute by having Lola's dream sequences consists of live-action foregrounds set against cartoon backdrops. These never come across as anything other than strange. The movie resorts to pratfalls and film speedups in completely unsuccessful attempts to generate laughter. Almost any series on Disney's cable channel is funnier.
The story has Lola practicing for her lead role in a contemporary musical version of Pygmalion while trying to sneak away to meet her favorite band member (Adam Garcia) at an invitation-only party in the Big Apple. One hopes in vain that the cheesy high school musical that ends the movie will be tuneful and cute, but it's edited so choppily that it is impossible to enjoy it.
My feelings about CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN can best be summarized by a teenage expression from a previous generation: "Gag me with a spoon!"
CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN runs 1:30. It is rated PG for "mild thematic elements and brief language" and would be acceptable for kids around 8 and up.
My son Jeffrey, age 14, gave the picture a single star. He said that Lohan's looks were the only good parts of the movie. He said the story was fake, cartoonish and a complete mishmash. He found it predictable and awful.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, February 20, 2004. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.
Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
Email: [email protected]
***********************************************************************
Want free reviews and weekly movie and video recommendations via Email? Just send me a letter with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
More on 'Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen'...
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
