Ok, as a result of the thread linked to in my sig, this week’s film nugget was a little gem starring Brittany Spears called Crossroads. It’s a little hour and a half long movie that whizzes by as if it were only 180 minutes! And now for the obligatory SPOILER ALERT!
Crossroads has been the title of at least 11 other films going back to a short film from 1912. This Crossroads will go down in history as just another one. It’s sort of sad when not even the title of this film has anything to add to the movie industry. And just so you know, all the following rolleyes in the review are just to give a small taste of the number of time I rolled my eyes during this movie.
As soon as the movie starts, I’m confused by the logic. Three young girls are burying a box, which the voice-over tells us contains their dreams. Now, I’ve never pretended to understand females, but even for girls I find this behavior confusing. “We have dreams – BURY THEM! Box them up and let them mold underground!”
Too bad they didn’t do that with this movie.
So anyway, the 3 best friends bury their dreams with the promise to dig up the box again when they graduate. Flash forward 8 years to Lucy (Brittany Spears) dancing around her bedroom in her underwear. NOW the movie is showing some promise! But then Dan Aykroyd (playing her father) enters the scene, completely disarming my heat-seeking moisture missile.
In the 8 years since the box burial, the 3 friends have grown apart. Lucy is valedictorian and all-around goody-two-shoes. Mimi is pregnant and has a reputation for being a skeeze. Kit is a bitchy homecoming queen type. But even though they’ve grown apart, Mimi still wants to go dig up the box. Kit says no, Lucy says she has other plans – namely losing her virginity to her equally virginal lab partner of the past 3 years.
We again get to see Ms. Spears in her undies, but she’s just teasing us (and her poor pathetic lab partner) as she cuts the foreplay short and asks him, “Do you really want to spend the rest of your life knowing that you did it for the first time with your lab partner?” How do I say it… oh I know :rolleyes:
Well let’s see, if my lab partner in high school was Brittany Spears, then I’d have to say YES! I’d probably also have thought about it consistantly for the past 3 years. I mean let’s face it, we’re talking about an 18-year-old virgin boy, the kid’s just a mess of hormornes, all of them wanting a girl. He doesn’t care if you’re his lab partner, he just wants sex! So of course, Brittany says no.
We end up where the girls buried the box, where all three have gethered again, just because. We learn what their dreams were. Mimi wants to get out of that crappy town and go to LA to audition for a record contract, Kit wants to get married (she’s already engaged to a guy going to school in LA who she hasn’t seen since Christmas time), and Lucy wants to see her mom, who walked out when she was 3 years old.
Well what a grand coincidence! Mimi wants to go to LA, Kit wants to see her fiance in LA, and Lucy wants to see her mom, who lives in Tuscon AZ, which is on the way to LA! Anyone smell a roadtrip? Actually, that’s not a roadtrip you’re smelling, that odor is actually coming from the DVD player, caused by this movie.
So Mimi gets a ride with a guy named Ben, a guitar player who it is rumored spent time in prison for killing a man. So sure, girls, hop on in, let’s ride! And even though they aren’t friends anymore, in fact they don’t really like each other much, they decide to drive across country together. Of course the car breaks down and they have no money, but Mimi has a “really good idea” and they go to a karaoke contest to sing for money. :rolleyes:
Well we know who the star of the movie is, so guess who gets money singing. Wow, you’d never see coming, would you? The song they won on was “I Love Rock and Roll” and I drifted off for a moment, day-dreaming of Joan Jett rushing the stage to kick Brittany’s ass and show her how that song should be sung.
BTW, don’t bother explaining to the audience how Mimi knew there’d be a contest like that in this little town the car just broke down in and they really had no plans for stopping there or anything. :rolleyes:
Also, as unpredictably as Brittany winning enough money singing karaoke, the girls bond after their success and are all bestest friends again Yay! During the re-bonding scenes we learn Mimi did not get pregnant by her boyfriend Kurt, but was raped by a guy at a party around Christmas time the one time she decided to go drink. The point of this story being in the movie? Well obviously, it’s that teen girls shouldn’t drink or they’ll get raped and pregnant. Or something. Actually, there is a point to the story being in the movie, but more on that later.
They arrive in Tuscon, Lucy is gonna pop in on her mom (whom she hasn’t seen in 15 years) and introduce herself. No phone call or anything first. What could possibly be wrong with that plan? Well nothing, except her mom (played by Kim Catrall) is a bit of a bitch and tells Lucy she didn’t want her and was an accident. When Lucy relays this story later, Ms. Spears actually shows some emotion in the scene (I guess she had to in at least one scene in the movie), and this upgrades her acting status from “piss poor” to just plain “poor”.
Now on to LA, which signifies the end of the movie, right? And now that they’re in LA, I have to wonder… four people new in town with no jobs and money from a karaoke contest - how are they affording that place on the beach? :rolleyes:
And since Lucy’s dream went sour (and she’s the star after all), so must the other girls’ dreams. Kit not only finds her fiance with another woman (another totally unexpected surprise from the scriptwriter :rolleyes: ) he also turns about to be the rapist who knocked up Mimi (hence the point of the story earlier - so the guy can’t just be a jackass, he has to be a rapist jackass?). Mimi also has an accident falling down some stairs and loses the baby.
So, with all this drama happening all at once, we have to be nearing the climax, and ergo the end, of the film RIGHT?!
Nope, not yet. Bastards.
Lucy’s father shows up to take her home, and while the girls wait for him to check out of the hotel, when Mimi says, “… doesn’t it feel like we left home a million years ago?” I couldn’t help but snap at the screen, “Yeah, that’s about how long ago the movie started.”
And then, suddenly, it’s all resolved when Lucy tells daddy she’s staying in LA. Just like that. She gets out of the cab and goes back to her friends. They go to the record audition - and beacuse Brittany’s the star - they all love her naturally. :rolleyes: And finaly, coming full circle, the girls bury another box. This time they’re burying their past (which should include this movie!), and they all live happily ever after. Or something. Who really cars anymore at this point.
So, my overall take on the movie: One and a half stars, and that’s mostly for Brittany in her underwear. It wasn’t so much a bad movie as it was dull, poorly written, and well, yeah ok, it was bad. Even the outtakes during the credits were dull. Don’t watch it unless you are a not-too-bright pre-teen who may find this to be a “deep” coming-of-age film, or you enjoy doing cruel things to yourself, such as taking a melon-baller to your own eyes or something.
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