Cool Girl

This movie is just sad. It's "My So-Called Life" without the depth or interesting characters. It's "Clueless" without the endearing charm, heart, or entertainment. And yet it's somehow undeniably totally derived from both. Swain herself not only actually physically resembles both Alicia Silverstone and Claire Danes (especially with the ruby-dyed hair), but her narration even seems to fall halfway in between "Clueless"' poignant perkiness and "My So Called Life's" dark brooding. The hitch is that both can't possibly be done properly at the same time, and "Girl" is shining proof of that. This movie is so directionless and muddled that I'm kind of upset I bothered to watch it. It attempts to tackle just about every possible teen issue it can, which does not help it either. No scene in the movie is longer than a minute and a half, and not one of the million or so tangent plot lines ever becomes fully developed. And not one of the multitude of characters is ever deveolped even enough for the audience to care about them in the least. And on top of that, the movie is tremendously out of touch. The characters are all one dimensional stereotypical representations that some studio exec thinks are what "real" teens are like. This whole movie feels so condensed and confused that I honestly couldn't possibly summarize the plot. I think it has something to do with this chick having a crush, but the movie goes so far off the path trying to be an extra-glossy after-school special that it completely self-destructs. It's not good in the beginning and it only gets more embarassing as the movie reaches its absurd conclusions (which do not provide any character resolution or moral to any of the stories anyway). Pretty sad crap.