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Crossroads
(2002)
Starring:
Britney Spears, Anson Mount
Director:
Tamara Davis
Rating: PG-13
Studio:
Paramount
Review
Posted: 3.14.02
Spoilers:
Minor
By Sara M. Fetters.
"Shallow
Crossroads Somehow Still Charms"
I can see
the hate mail now. If this film starred anyone else, I’d be
safe. Throw a polarizing superstar like Britney Spears into the
mix, however, and all bets are off. So a semi-positive review of
her first film Crossroads is bound to lose me some
readers, or at the very least some incredibly – how should I put
this? – expletively worded emails. So what? I actually
partially enjoyed the singer’s debut film. What kind of critic
would I be if I didn’t say so?
Granted,
we’re not talking high art here by any stretch of the
imagination. This isn’t a film I’m going to be touting in
December as one of the year’s finest. Heck, ten months from now
I probably won’t remember a thing about it. But for right now, I
am perfectly content to enjoy Crossroads for what it is –
a partially charming throwback to the 80’s and films like
Sixteen Candles and made John Hughes king.
Spears
plays Lucy Wagner, an 18-year-old high school student facing
graduation. Her former friends Kit (Zoë Saldana, Get Over It)
and Mimi (Taryn Manning, Crazy/Beautiful) are also
looking at graduation and although their friendships have taken
wildly divergent paths; Kit became the class beauty, Lucy a
brain, while Mimi struggles with being pregnant; a pact made as
children brings them all together once.
You see,
as little girls and best friends, the trio buried a time capsule
filled with their wishes and dreams for the future with a deal
to open it the night of graduation. While the three seem to have
little in common, the opening of this box forces them to
remember their past history and wonder if it can’t be rekindled.
Mimi
definitely wants to find out. She’s leaving with a mysterious
guitarist named Ben (Anson Mount, Urban Legends: Final Cut)
for Los Angeles to enter a singing competition and asks her
former friends if they’d like to come along. It just so happens
Kit’s boyfriend and fiancé is out in L.A. going to college and
she’s dying to see him and find out why he isn’t coming home for
the summer. As for Lucy, her mother Caroline (Sex and the
City’s Kim Cattral) left her father when she was just a
baby. Never getting the chance to know her, the young woman has
always held out hope that Caroline wanted to reunite as much as
she has. Residing in Arizona, Lucy figures if she tags along
than they can drop her there and she can finally find the
reconciliation that she knows her and mom are seeking.
This is a
bunch of hooey and I knew it not three minutes into the movie.
Not that the fact really surprised me – the trailers basically
gave that away. What did surprise me was how much I was actually
enjoying myself. Yes, Crossroads is silly and thin. Yes,
the group of young actors – especially Spears – have a long way
to go as thespians. For some reason, though, I just didn’t mind.
There was an effervescent bubbling to it all that got under my
skin. It was almost like I was ten watching Ferris Beuller’s
Day Off, the sheer silly joy of everything getting the
better of me.
That said,
the movie is awfully sophomoric. Tamra Davis has made exactly
one good movie in her career, the strange Drew Barrymore film
Guncrazy, and that fact is not lost in her handling of
Crossroads. This is the rare (relatively) low budget film
that looks like it was made for far less than the ten million
dollars it supposedly cost to make. Her handling of the big
moments; Kit’s visit to her boyfriend, the revelation of who the
father of Mimi’s baby is, Lucy reunion with her mother; is
beyond inept. There is no emotional heft to any of these scenes
and while Shonda Rhimes screenplay is equally to blame, Davis
doesn’t help her cause by framing the scenes so poorly.
But what
made Crossroads worthwhile for me was the interaction
between the girls. There is something natural and pleasant going
on between them, and even if the script is all hogwash the
female bonding going on somehow remains believable. And while
Cattral is unpleasant and wasted as Caroline, Dan Aykroyd is
surprisingly charming as Lucy’s worried and controlling father
Pete. I could see glimpses of my own dad throughout his
performance, and the final scene between himself and Spears
crystallized beautifully the special bond existing between
fathers and daughters and how hard it is for dads to truly let
go of their little girls.
So call me
names if you must, I’m still going to give a passing grade to
Britney Spears and Crossroads. It may not be genius but
it passes the time all right. And while her future as a musician
may not be a given, with a little more practice, a better script
and for more sound direction she could one day make a heck of a
decent actress. So there.
Rating: 2.5
out of 4
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