Oh Miley Cyrus. What ever will we do with you? To paraphrase the terrible songstress Britney Spears, you’re not a girl, not yet a woman. And nothing exemplifies that quite like Miley’s newest movie, LOL.
First red flag: the soon-to-be-ex boyfriend who responds to Miley’s “Why didn’t you text me?” with “Oh, I was cheating on you.” … What? I just, I don’t understand. In what world would even the most entitled ass-hat assume a nonchalant “I cheated on you” would be an acceptable answer to any question. And then his friend in the background acts like he just forgot her birthday. What?
The problem I’m seeing is that the movie doesn’t know what it wants to be. It wants to be about the problems of a girl learning more about herself, but she comes off as a spoiled popular brat who parties on her mother’s dime. It tries to be a gritty coming of age story, but her dream boy sweeps her off to Paris … Paris. I don’t even take weekend trips to Chicago from Indianapolis and she’s going to Paris? Also, shopping montage does not a deep film make. And it also tries to be a love story, but the relationship of the perfect boy who encourages her to skip school and and sweeps her off to Paris and is in a band somehow comes off more superficial than Twilight. … I’m not even sure how you do that, but LOL does it. When she goes into the narrative about love, it just wreaks of someone who has no idea what love is. It’s a cliche wrapped in another cliche.
I’m not saying the movie needs to be a gritty portrayal of a teenager’s life, but if you’re going to make a movie about a wild child, then make one that means something. Either make a gritty movie with depth or a girl learning to love herself movie and don’t go halfway with a safe bastard child of the two genres. It’s like Miley said, “I want to show I’m not with Disney anymore, but I don’t want to try to actually act. Anybody got a half-ass script for me?” Meeting somewhere in the middle just looks sad and also sends some mixed messages to the girls its obviously targeting. The points where she seems happy are the partying and skipping school and having sex. And the problems she faces seem trite because she isn’t a very considerate or responsible or likable person.
Am I thinking too much about this? Maybe. But this trailer should have been a whole lot funnier for the stupidity level its on. Instead, it’s just … off.
UPDATE: after writing this, I discovered LOL is based on a 2008 French movie called… LOL. So not only is this a crappy story, but it’s not even an original crappy story.
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