5/10
I really thought the movie could have been better.
26 February 2004
"Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" is the story of Lola Cep, played by Lindsey Lohan, trying to fit into a new town and school after moving from New York. She wants to be an actress and she creates dramatic stories about her life and like some teen aged girls she gets over dramatic about the events happening around her. It is all part of her attempt to be more interesting.

I really thought the movie could have been better.

Lohan does a great job playing the "drama queen" and for the most part her character is believable.

Her new friend Ella, played by Alison Pill, is the nice rich girl while Carla, played by Megan Fox, is the nasty bitch rich girl and Lola's main nemesis.

I was in drama club in high school and those scenes did seem believable as the group is preparing for the school musical. In fact, one year, we had a freshman girl beat our the senior girl for the lead in our school play. That caused a lot of issues just like those shown in the film. Carol Kane's Miss Baggoli was a bit too loopy but my drama directors could be strange.

The problem was the story.

The main theme of the movie, as I saw it, was Lola building this fantasy world for her life, having it crash down as lie built upon lie does eventually, then comes redemption and she becomes a better person for it in the end. Lola learns she can be interesting just being herself.

That is a nice film in itself. Unfortunately, the filmmakers couldn't leave it alone and added an unneeded big city adventure for Lola and Ella. It is understandable since we need someway to have Lola's interesting fake life uncovered but it led to an unbelievable situation when she meets her rock star obsession. I kept expecting her and Ella to get into one zany scrape after another, but that didn't happen. If you are going to waste film shooting in the big city at least have something major happen.

The other issue was one of theme.

If the theme is that lying to make oneself interesting will bring retribution - in this case Lola's humiliation in front of her classmates, then the ending of the film didn't fit the theme. I guess it was just Disney's way of getting a happy ending but the stories Lola created were so huge it was not believable that she got what she wanted in the end. She turns out to be really no better than Carla, who gets what she wants because she thinks she deserves it.

Lola was far too lucky. A little realism would have been nice.

Lindsey Lohan showed a spark that could lead her to better roles. I really think that she could be a big star a few years from now. She shined in this movie and was by far the best part of it, bad script and all. I think years from now people will be saying "Hilary who?"

Personally I thought the most interesting supporting character was Calum Cep, Lola's dad, played by Tom McCamus. Those of us who watch sci-fi shows produced in Canada may know McCamus from his role as Mason Eckhart on the "Mutant X" television series.
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