Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN ** A lot of fluff and nonsense. It's about a spirited teen who moves from New York City to a dull suburb in New Jersey and faces difficulty when she enters into a new school. One of her pupils has the Most Popular Girl title that she strives to have (after all, she IS a Drama Queen!), so she takes the lead role in a school play to attain the title. The shallow screenplay is so full of holes one wonders how it managed to hold its own at the box office. Production designer Leslie MacDonald and costume designer David C. Robinson have a field day making this rather trivial production visually rich.

'Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen' comes as a disappointment from Lindsay Lohan after the very funny 'Freaky Friday' and 'Mean Girls'. Here she plays Mary, naming herself Lola, a girl who leaves New York, the city she loves, and moves to New Jersey with her mother and two little sisters. At her new school she becomes friends with Ella (Alison Pill), mainly because they both like the same rock band, Sid Arthur. Lola is a nice person but lies too much because she wants to be liked. She seems very sure of herself, but we understand that is only on the surface. Since the school is where most of the story takes place we need a villain, another good looking girl named Carla (Mega Fox). Parts of the story involve the bad Sid Arthur breaking up, a last concert they will give in New York and Lola and Ella trying to get in. Carla will be there since her father is the lawyer that represents Sid Arthur. Other parts involve a school play where Lola is cast for the leading role and Carla only for a small supporting role.

I am not sure why this film was made, but I guess to show Lohan dancing, singing, being arrogant, learning her lesson, have a happy ending, do some more dancing and some more singing. It felt more like a Hilary Duff film and I was not surprised to learn the part of Lola was in fact offered to her first. No offense to Duff, but Lohan is a much better actress and has proved that in films with scripts so much more intelligent than this one. This one fits in a line with Duff films like 'A Cinderella Story' or 'Raise Your Voice', films where you can enjoy the good looking lady but nothing else. I hope Lohan's next film will have the wit of a 'Mean Girls' again. I even have hard time believing young teenage girls will enjoy this one. There are some moments for them to be funny I guess, but most of the time it is not. Not for male adults, not for teenage girls.

I like Lindsay Lohan, a lot actually, therefore I was able to finish this film. She does the best she can, basically proving she is too good for material like this. Without her I would have hated this film completely. Since most people will not like Lohan as much as I do I can honestly say you will probably hate this film too.

I myself am a teenager and took my 10 year old sister to see this movie. I won't say much as to not ruin the movie for those who have not seen it but i will give my opinion on the mood of the film and such.

If you want to see this, don't expect a deep and meaningful (or realistic) outlook on highschool life because it is your everyday teen/highschool comedy with the over-used storyline of new girl vs popular girl then new girl gets the guy and brings popular girl down.

On a better note, Lohan's character, "Lola" was an entertaining one and i enjoyed watching her over-exaggerated perspective of things. I must admit that the set up of Lola's room and the way their family lived and the clothes Lola wore were inspiring. I don't know if this is going to be the case for everyone (haha) but i know that point of the movie made it all worthwhile for me.

I'd recommend taking a younger sister/cousin/friend between about 6-12. Remember, sometimes we need a silly movie!

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen looks like a very over-produced film (every scene features loud bright colours, neon lights, heavy costume design..etc)and the scene where Lola and Carla (Megan Fox) are sitting in the auditorium features heavy blurring, thereby making the scene a tad jarring. I did think that Lohan, Garcia and Kane gave solid performances even if the latter two didn't get as much screen time.

The film is far from the worst ever made, but it is definitely one of Lohan's weaker films, especially compared to the likes of "Freaky Friday" and "Mean girls". I don't think the film is terrible per say just a little boring and very predictable. It was clearly a good children's book, just not compelling enough a story for filming. One for younger girls I'm afraid.

"Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" is the story of Lola Cep, played by Lindsey Lohan, trying to fit into a new town and school after moving from New York. She wants to be an actress and she creates dramatic stories about her life and like some teen aged girls she gets over dramatic about the events happening around her. It is all part of her attempt to be more interesting.

I really thought the movie could have been better.

Lohan does a great job playing the "drama queen" and for the most part her character is believable.

Her new friend Ella, played by Alison Pill, is the nice rich girl while Carla, played by Megan Fox, is the nasty bitch rich girl and Lola's main nemesis.

I was in drama club in high school and those scenes did seem believable as the group is preparing for the school musical. In fact, one year, we had a freshman girl beat our the senior girl for the lead in our school play. That caused a lot of issues just like those shown in the film. Carol Kane's Miss Baggoli was a bit too loopy but my drama directors could be strange.

The problem was the story.

The main theme of the movie, as I saw it, was Lola building this fantasy world for her life, having it crash down as lie built upon lie does eventually, then comes redemption and she becomes a better person for it in the end. Lola learns she can be interesting just being herself.

That is a nice film in itself. Unfortunately, the filmmakers couldn't leave it alone and added an unneeded big city adventure for Lola and Ella. It is understandable since we need someway to have Lola's interesting fake life uncovered but it led to an unbelievable situation when she meets her rock star obsession. I kept expecting her and Ella to get into one zany scrape after another, but that didn't happen. If you are going to waste film shooting in the big city at least have something major happen.

The other issue was one of theme.

If the theme is that lying to make oneself interesting will bring retribution - in this case Lola's humiliation in front of her classmates, then the ending of the film didn't fit the theme. I guess it was just Disney's way of getting a happy ending but the stories Lola created were so huge it was not believable that she got what she wanted in the end. She turns out to be really no better than Carla, who gets what she wants because she thinks she deserves it.

Lola was far too lucky. A little realism would have been nice.

Lindsey Lohan showed a spark that could lead her to better roles. I really think that she could be a big star a few years from now. She shined in this movie and was by far the best part of it, bad script and all. I think years from now people will be saying "Hilary who?"

Personally I thought the most interesting supporting character was Calum Cep, Lola's dad, played by Tom McCamus. Those of us who watch sci-fi shows produced in Canada may know McCamus from his role as Mason Eckhart on the "Mutant X" television series.