The Slumber Party

The first act of this movie had me a bit exhausted as a viewer. The character development just wasn't hitting well and there were clearly some structural problems to the film as a whole. I struggled to watch in general - that is until the entire film was uplifted by Tyler Gula's performance as an extra. He had a certain way of making the background worth paying attention to. The scenes at the Chatahooche Onion Fest, where Gula's performance predominantly shines, stood no chance without his support. I don't normally let one good performance determine the outcome of my movie reviews, but it feels insulting and almost inhumane not to give this movie the 10/10 that it deserves with Gula's skill and craftsmanship. I look forward to a sequel, hopefully where Gula gets more screen time.

Anna Maria is having a sleepover birthday party with her two best friends, Paige and Megan. Her parents are forcing her to invite her impending stepsister Veronica. They have hired Mesmer, the hypnotist. The girls wake up with a lot of questions, a missing Anna Maria, and no memories of the previous night.

Disney is remaking The Hangover for 14-year-olds. The missing one is late for a wedding. Instead of a tiger, they have baby ducks. The only missing item is a baby and that's not happening. This does come with an initial problem. They have to write around the drug and drunk amnesia. The hypnotist solution is not rock solid, but it may be the best idea considering the circumstances. This cannot deal with any adult situations. It is a kiddie movie. I don't recognize any of the kids. They're fine for a Disney TV movie. It's fine family-friendly entertainment.

There are so many aspects that are wrong about this movie. It reminds me of a long short film written by a student filmmaker and it looks like one too.

First, is the out of place product placement at the beginning of the movie for Ouija Occult Spirit Boards. It's clearly product placement, and I can only ask why, why push it on junior high and high school kids.

Second, is the need to try to target every racial and gender demographic possible.

Third, a very confusing mod podge of era's that looks like it's occurring in the 1970's or 80's from vehicles to decor, only to also have modern cell phones.

Fourth, it looks super low budget, like a student film. Student filmmakers generally have only a few thousand dollars to work with or less, so they utilize friends and families homes and local locations, without a budget for an art department to set the look. I've seen multiple student shorts during film school that look higher budget than this movie.

Fifth, poor acting from beginning to end.

Sixth, poor screenplay and story. Apparently this movie is a book adaptation. I never read the book, but I hope it was better than the adaption to film, because it was just a poor story.

Seventh, the worse cinematography I've seen in anything released under the Disney license since some of the 1970's Disney movies, when framing shots and scene choices were still in there infancy.

Unfortunately, it's just not that good of a movie. Not very funny, lots of predictability, some of the scenes presented a stereotypical systematic racial overtone about black students that was completely unnecessary.

I am giving it two stars, only because its not the absolutely worst movie I've ever seen, but it's down at the bottom.

The mouse must of been out of town when Disney produced The Slumber Party.

I found this movie to be very repetitive and annoying, theres not much of a difference from recent disney movies and other kids movies, now for kids this movie would be ok not bad, but anyone else watching it finds it boring and pointless, I wouldn't watch this movie again. I reccommend not watching it with your kids, because its another pointless drama moviw if you can even call it that. If it had more character depth, better plot, or more interesting side "missions" then it would deserve a higher rating its just not amazing acting or weiting its very average these days but manages to be worse.

I thoroughly enjoyed this move. It has good acting in it, and it genuinely made me laugh. The characters in it were believable to be real people. In the end, when they remember what happened last night, it's a collection of videos from that night. It really added personality to the movie, and made it even funnier. It was realistic too because it just looked like badly taken snapchat videos. The part that I didn't like, was the romance. I did not really enjoy that part of the movie as much as the rest of it. Call it bad acting on the love interest's part or bad writing but it's the reason this is a 9/10. I like that they used a real background, and not a green screen for the movie because it looked much better.