Have you ever seen something so awful, so terrible, so frightening, that you couldn't look away? This film is akin to a fiery cataclysm or roadkill. It is literally so bad, it's almost mesmerizing.
This film was on cable after the movie my husband and I had been watching, and we left the TV on. Big mistake. After about ten minutes, unable to tear our eyes from the train wreck, my husband and I wanted to start a list of the bad messages it sends to teenage girls, or, most probably, girls a lot younger. (Why not? It's never too early to learn that if you're an overweight 14-year-old girl, you'll either never have a boyfriend, or you'll jump at the chance to get one that's old enough to legally get into a bar.) That's in addition to the other list we wanted to start, of the numerous dangerous and/or illegal activities that the girls engage in, in order to win a prestigious place to eat lunch when they enter high school after the summer. (Because everyone remembers how important where THEY ate lunch was when they were in high school.)
The messages of a GOOD film would be that overweight girls are just as valuable as anorexic ones, and that true friendship is more important than where you eat lunch. Instead, this movie tells young girls that dangerous, illegal hijinks and deception should be rewarded with popularity and boyfriends galore.
You have been warned.
This film was on cable after the movie my husband and I had been watching, and we left the TV on. Big mistake. After about ten minutes, unable to tear our eyes from the train wreck, my husband and I wanted to start a list of the bad messages it sends to teenage girls, or, most probably, girls a lot younger. (Why not? It's never too early to learn that if you're an overweight 14-year-old girl, you'll either never have a boyfriend, or you'll jump at the chance to get one that's old enough to legally get into a bar.) That's in addition to the other list we wanted to start, of the numerous dangerous and/or illegal activities that the girls engage in, in order to win a prestigious place to eat lunch when they enter high school after the summer. (Because everyone remembers how important where THEY ate lunch was when they were in high school.)
The messages of a GOOD film would be that overweight girls are just as valuable as anorexic ones, and that true friendship is more important than where you eat lunch. Instead, this movie tells young girls that dangerous, illegal hijinks and deception should be rewarded with popularity and boyfriends galore.
You have been warned.