Excited for another night of movie-watching, and armed with a better snack than yesterday’s flavorless popcorn, I eased myself into the La-Z-Boy recliner and began the movie.
Sleepover. It was more of a tween-y chick flick with the cliché exaggerated girl fights, the hot popular guy everyone is madly in love with, the popular clique that oppresses the whole school and the dorky outcasts who rise up in the end and defeat the popular clique.
Julie (Alexa Vega, “Spy Kids”) and her geeky friends, who currently have to sit next to the smelly dumpster for lunch, are up against the popular group for the lunch spot next to the fountain. To settle the feud, they agree to go on a scavenger hunt that includes dressing an Old Navy window mannequin in their own clothes and stealing a pair of the legendary popular stud Steve Phillips’ boxers.
They “live it up” a little and during the movie-long scavenger hunt, and supposedly learn the cheesy lessons that recur in almost every movie.
But to me, no lesson was learned. In fact, it only showed that it was OK to disobey authority, carelessly mess around online with an older man and attempt to drink at a club. They even end up getting away with all these things, not taking much responsibility for all the wrong things they did.
Its attempts at “funny” were not really impressive, neither was its use of a dull storyline. And in the end, it teaches us that to be happy, all you have to do is break your parents’ rules, sneak out, and get the cute guy to fall in love with you. Simple.
By Jude El Buri
