Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen (DVD)

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The trouble with reviewing a film like Disney's 2004 release "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" is that it was clearly intended for an audience of young teenage girls, and most reviewers like myself are anything but young teenage girls. It's a minor dilemma, but I have never tried to second-guess whether any particular viewers, young or old, would like anything. I can only evaluate a film based on its cinematic merit and its appeal to a general public, of which I am one. On this basis I think I can safely say that the movie might, maybe, perhaps, could possibly appeal to young teen girls but probably not to anyone older or of the opposite gender. Most assuredly, the film did not appeal to me.

The movie stars the spirited mid-teen Lindsay Lohan as a spirited mid-teen in a wholly formulaic teen comedy. You may remember Ms. Lohan from Disney's far-better "Freaky Friday," where she had Jamie Lee Curtis to carry most of the load. But here she's on her own, and, frankly, she does not yet appear up to the task.

My guess is that Disney is hoping that Ms. Lohan will prove a latter-day Haley Mills, the actress who played so many mid-teen parts in Disney movies of the sixties like "The Parent Trap," "In Search of the Castaways," "The Moonspinners," "That Darn Cat!" and so forth. The trouble is, Ms. Lohan hasn't the charisma of Ms. Mills, not in "Confessions" at any rate. This probably isn't Lohan's fault. She is obviously a talented actress, but she is given little to work with, and as a result she comes off appearing no different from any other pretty, mid-teen actress in this or any other teen film. In fact, I thought her costar, mid-teen Alison Pill, was a more interesting character. Until Ms. Lohan finds a role that taps into the unique qualities of her personality, whatever they might be, she may find herself hopelessly lost in more humdrum, dime-a-dozen affairs like "Confessions."

Anyway, Lohan plays a girl named Mary Elizabeth Cep, who is ambitious and outgoing and wants more than anything in the world to be a stage and movie star. She is given to endless flights of fancy and exaggeration, even unto changing her name to "Lola" because she thinks it fits her better. She lives in New York City, the "center of the universe" and the perfect place she believes to give her emerging career a start. Until her mother decides to pack her up and move to the suburbs of New Jersey. She's crushed and decides her life is over. She describes herself, in typically overdramatic fashion, as "a flamingo in a flock of pigeons."

But once she moves into her new house and goes to her new high school, she perks up again. She intends to get the lead in the school's new play, a contemporary update of Shaw's "Pygmalion," done to modern music and called "Eliza Rock." The movie concerns mainly her involvement in the musical and her simultaneous attempts to meet her idol, rock star Stu Wolff.

Everyone in the movie is a stereotype, so you'd better accept that at the outset. Every clichéd character you've ever met in a teen comedy you will meet here in the first twenty minutes of the show. Lola's mother (Glenne Headly), for instance, is a bohemian-type potter whom we hardly see for most of the movie. It's important in teen comedies for parents to disappear early on and ignore most everything their kids are doing. Then there's the friend Lola meets at school, Ella (Alison Pill), a shy, sweet, ultraconservative, ultra-nice girl, almost the exact opposite of Lola except in her similar devotion to singer Stu Wolff. Also at school we meet Sam (Eli Marienthal), a shy, sweet, ultra-nice, good-looking, clean-cut teen guy who falls for Lola, but for whom Lola has no time.

Of course, we must also have the requisite villain in the piece, so there's the quintessentially evil, nasty, rich, mean-spirited, snob teen girl, Carla (Megan Fox), who becomes Lola's rival on campus and in the play. Two final stereotypes: the drama teacher, Miss Baggoli (Carol Kane), is a dense, dowdy little lady who hardly knows what's going on around her; you know, like every teacher, at least in the movies; and Stu Wolff (Adam Garcia) is an English singer/poet whom Lola and Ella idolize, who is in reality as shallow and superficial as a fence post.