Sydney White (Universal) + Suburban Girl
(Image) + Charm School (aka Ninas Mal/Sony/Columbia; DVDs)
Picture: C+ Sound: B-/C+/B- Extras: C-/D/C Film: C-/D/C+
While
there has been a somewhat intelligent cycle of teen films being made over the last
ten to fifteen years, quite the opposite has been the case with films featuring
young female leads aimed at teen gals and younger. These films have been more about codependence
and a world view that is not that realistic.
Coincidentally, several of these films are arriving at once on DVD and
remind us of what is wrong with such filmmaking.
Sydney White is the return of Amanda Bynes
after her triumph in Hairspray, back
in the teen-aimed venue she started in.
In this tale, she becomes a freshman in college and besides learning how
her new school’s social breakdown goes and maybe find a guy she likes, it is
the epitome of the formula film that she is going to need to pull away from if
she is going to have a career. Though we
have seen worse, this is just another tired production and that the pretty much
in-decline production company Morgan Creek was involved explains much of
it. Extras include deleted scenes, a
featurette and gag reel that is better than the film.
Suburban Girl pretends to be about adults, but
is really another formula teen film, this time with the grossly overrated Sarah
Michelle Gellar in what is essentially a Devil
Wears Prada (see our review elsewhere on this site) clone as she enters the
world of book publishing and editing with the same troubles that face newcomers
to fashion magazines. Alec Baldwin plays
the opposite of Meryl Streep by being a father figure to help her out, but the
film is a bad rip-off otherwise even hiring actress Vanessa Branch as “the British friend” and is
very likable. If only the film was
original in any way. A trailer and
Director Marc Klein’s audio commentary are the only extras.
Charm School (aka Ninas Mal) is the interesting twist here because it is an import
and has the guts not to follow many of the tired Hollywood conventions the
other films try to. In this case, wild
Adele (Martha Higareda) is a wild gal who wants to be an actress, but she’ll
need to become a “fair lady” in a hurry and is put into the title place to
change her ways. Though the ideology of
the film can be considered problematic on a few levels, including Feminist,
this is still a more amusing, naturalistic, interesting film than the others
because there is more of an element of surprise and it at least admits any
virgin/whore complex it may have.
Hollywood (even, and increasingly, independent U.S. productions) films
seem to just start with the gals being “so wonderful” beyond reproach, it is
good to see a film that is not as plastic or stuck up.
All films
are anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 except the 2.35 in Sydney and all have that look that you know is meant to appeal to a
female audience: emphasis on some primary colors, no challenging shots,
flatness of a TV sitcom or episode of Oprah and slight softness that never
makes sense. Suburban Girl was even issued in HD-DVD (we could not secure a copy
before this posting) and that would have made the comparisons even more
interesting for three so similar approaches.
The results in all cases are adequate at best.
All also
have Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes, but HD-DVD bound Suburban Girl has the poorest mix here with dialogue that sounds
like a low-budget affair, though if we heard the sound form the HD-DVD, we
could say that with more certainty. The
other two films have just enough balance between their lite music and dialogue
recording.
None of
this is memorable, which is sad and also means the market is wide open for a
teen film that is not necessarily so dramatic in its comedy (Juno) for the
commercial market. When the films are this
forgettable, you can understand why.
- Nicholas Sheffo
