How I ended up watching a clichéd Disney produced film at two in the morning is anyone's guess. How I persevered after the first fifteen minutes is an even more puzzling question.
The opening of this film is truly diabolical; bad lines, bad acting, totally derivative, the characters nothing but stereotypes. There's also what feels like dozens of people introduced within the first five or six scenes, which is never good. The hero (anti-hero) was pretty much a carbon copy of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club; and of course, the guy from the wrong side of the tracks falls for the rich girl, dad warns him off, but it all comes right in the end.
To my surprise it picked up, and I even had a smile on my face by the end, which is surely the point of these sugary tween movies. The highlights were the two hipster indie kid sophomores, played by the very promising Cameron Monaghan and Nolan Sotillo. The banter was funny, they had great chemistry with each other, they acted great and looked the part. No reason they shouldn't go far in the future, and I believe Monaghan has already established himself in television. The rest of the cast were serviceable if a little less memorable.
As for the plot and writing, it was all of course hopelessly predictable, and some of the lines will have you laughing for the wrong reasons, but somehow it was almost refreshing to watch a film where I knew there would be a happy ending. Grown up Hollywood has a tendency to feel their film won't be considered 'serious' or 'artistic' if they don't end it with tragedy, which leads to many an inane and pointless death to close out a movie. Here, the good guys get together, lessons are learned, and there are enough nice little sweet moments like the candy necklace (no pun intended) to feel your intelligence hasn't been insulted too much by sitting through a movie that really anyone over thirteen will have seen many times before.
It helped that the soundtrack was excellent, especially the M83 and Passion Pit songs. Films like this are a great way for tweens to find music other than what is promoted on the radio or music channels.
There are many worse films than this, although I can't think of many worse opening few scenes.
The opening of this film is truly diabolical; bad lines, bad acting, totally derivative, the characters nothing but stereotypes. There's also what feels like dozens of people introduced within the first five or six scenes, which is never good. The hero (anti-hero) was pretty much a carbon copy of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club; and of course, the guy from the wrong side of the tracks falls for the rich girl, dad warns him off, but it all comes right in the end.
To my surprise it picked up, and I even had a smile on my face by the end, which is surely the point of these sugary tween movies. The highlights were the two hipster indie kid sophomores, played by the very promising Cameron Monaghan and Nolan Sotillo. The banter was funny, they had great chemistry with each other, they acted great and looked the part. No reason they shouldn't go far in the future, and I believe Monaghan has already established himself in television. The rest of the cast were serviceable if a little less memorable.
As for the plot and writing, it was all of course hopelessly predictable, and some of the lines will have you laughing for the wrong reasons, but somehow it was almost refreshing to watch a film where I knew there would be a happy ending. Grown up Hollywood has a tendency to feel their film won't be considered 'serious' or 'artistic' if they don't end it with tragedy, which leads to many an inane and pointless death to close out a movie. Here, the good guys get together, lessons are learned, and there are enough nice little sweet moments like the candy necklace (no pun intended) to feel your intelligence hasn't been insulted too much by sitting through a movie that really anyone over thirteen will have seen many times before.
It helped that the soundtrack was excellent, especially the M83 and Passion Pit songs. Films like this are a great way for tweens to find music other than what is promoted on the radio or music channels.
There are many worse films than this, although I can't think of many worse opening few scenes.