MadsenOMC
07-14-2004, 12:18 PM
SPOILERS!
Seeing that I never turn down the opportunity to review a movie and that I had to review this for work, I got to see this movie last night. Of course, I am not the target audience for this movie, so maybe I'm being a little unfair, but it's easily one of the most painful experiences I've ever had in a movie theater. 90 minutes of pure torture. Did we really need a modern retelling of Cinderella with Hilary Duff? I think not.
Anyway, so Duff is Sam, a social outcast at school. She has one friend, Carter, who is supposed to be Jon Cryer or Anthony Michael Hall, but is such a pale imitation it's insulting. He says things like "girlfriend" to Sam's black waitress friend and dresses up like a gangster and spouts off some gangsta lingo. Bad news. So, Sam is also a straight A student and she works at her evil stepmother's diner. Her father died years ago in an earthquake! Yes, an earthquake. It's unintentionally funny.
Her stepmom and stepsisters are real mean, and she's always working, and she has no friends other than Carter, but at least there's Nomad. He is some dude she met in a Princeton chat room. Do they really have those? They have been emailing and sending text messages for a month. He wants to meet. They don't realize that they already know each other. He is Austin, the cutest, most popular guy in school. Quarterback and student body president. But he's also sensitive and likes poetry. So they decide to meet at this Halloween homecoming dance. 11 PM sharp. They do meet, but she has this tiny little mask on, and even though they have seen each other a million times (at school, at the diner she works at), he honestly can't tell who she is. Are you fucking serious?! Of course she has to be back by midnight and cuts their meeting short.
Now, this is 30 minutes into the movie. So for the next hour, he tries to discover who she is, while she thinks about telling him the truth. He sees her everday in the hallway, he sees her at the diner, he goes through the school yearbook, and genius boy Austin still can't figure it out. Of course you know where it's going and how it will end, but it feels like it takes 18 hours to get there.
To make matters worse, the message here is horrible. When Sam mistakenly thinks that Mr. Wonderful is this sci-fi nerd who has a crush on her, she is absolutely repulsed. Why? Does she care about looks? Outward appearances? Because we're supposed to believe that she's above that. That she really cares about this guy because she has gotten to know him. Disgusting. She ends up being as cruel and shallow as the people who are mean to her throughout the movie. That reminds me. They keep calling her "diner girl," like that's some big insult. Don't most people have jobs in high school? No one speaks or acts like an actual high school student.
Duff is one terrible actress, too. She is completely bland, has zero charisma, and even less chemistry with Chad Michael Murray, who is equally bland. They have no acting ability between them. They are only capable of one facial expression, and anything requiring more than that (laughing, crying), they can't do. It's amazing how truly awful they are. At least decnt leads could have made it slightly easier to tolerate. No such luck.
Overall, I hated every single second of this movie. The terrible message it sends, the horrible writing and acting, the way no one even slightly resembled an actual person of high school age, everything. Now, pre-teen girls will be more forgiving. But this is a candidate for worst movie of the year for me.
1/10
Seeing that I never turn down the opportunity to review a movie and that I had to review this for work, I got to see this movie last night. Of course, I am not the target audience for this movie, so maybe I'm being a little unfair, but it's easily one of the most painful experiences I've ever had in a movie theater. 90 minutes of pure torture. Did we really need a modern retelling of Cinderella with Hilary Duff? I think not.
Anyway, so Duff is Sam, a social outcast at school. She has one friend, Carter, who is supposed to be Jon Cryer or Anthony Michael Hall, but is such a pale imitation it's insulting. He says things like "girlfriend" to Sam's black waitress friend and dresses up like a gangster and spouts off some gangsta lingo. Bad news. So, Sam is also a straight A student and she works at her evil stepmother's diner. Her father died years ago in an earthquake! Yes, an earthquake. It's unintentionally funny.
Her stepmom and stepsisters are real mean, and she's always working, and she has no friends other than Carter, but at least there's Nomad. He is some dude she met in a Princeton chat room. Do they really have those? They have been emailing and sending text messages for a month. He wants to meet. They don't realize that they already know each other. He is Austin, the cutest, most popular guy in school. Quarterback and student body president. But he's also sensitive and likes poetry. So they decide to meet at this Halloween homecoming dance. 11 PM sharp. They do meet, but she has this tiny little mask on, and even though they have seen each other a million times (at school, at the diner she works at), he honestly can't tell who she is. Are you fucking serious?! Of course she has to be back by midnight and cuts their meeting short.
Now, this is 30 minutes into the movie. So for the next hour, he tries to discover who she is, while she thinks about telling him the truth. He sees her everday in the hallway, he sees her at the diner, he goes through the school yearbook, and genius boy Austin still can't figure it out. Of course you know where it's going and how it will end, but it feels like it takes 18 hours to get there.
To make matters worse, the message here is horrible. When Sam mistakenly thinks that Mr. Wonderful is this sci-fi nerd who has a crush on her, she is absolutely repulsed. Why? Does she care about looks? Outward appearances? Because we're supposed to believe that she's above that. That she really cares about this guy because she has gotten to know him. Disgusting. She ends up being as cruel and shallow as the people who are mean to her throughout the movie. That reminds me. They keep calling her "diner girl," like that's some big insult. Don't most people have jobs in high school? No one speaks or acts like an actual high school student.
Duff is one terrible actress, too. She is completely bland, has zero charisma, and even less chemistry with Chad Michael Murray, who is equally bland. They have no acting ability between them. They are only capable of one facial expression, and anything requiring more than that (laughing, crying), they can't do. It's amazing how truly awful they are. At least decnt leads could have made it slightly easier to tolerate. No such luck.
Overall, I hated every single second of this movie. The terrible message it sends, the horrible writing and acting, the way no one even slightly resembled an actual person of high school age, everything. Now, pre-teen girls will be more forgiving. But this is a candidate for worst movie of the year for me.
1/10