Confessions of a Lying Witch Child

So I guess the BBC is having a Lindsay Lohan season or something, because last week 'Freaky Friday' was available on iPlayer, and this week it's 'Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen'. I'd heard of this film but not seen it, so as a crappy teen chick flick fan, and having absorbed more than my daily dose of Degrassi already, I felt needs must and put it on. I'm still not sure whether this was a mistake or a great decision. It did give me a lot of material for a blog post.

Here's the basic premise: whiny brat New Yorker with questionable clothing style (even for the noughties) Mary 'Lola'* Step moves with her mom and little sisters to SUBURBIA. I know. Her life is so difficult. At her new school she encounters the Burberry-clad Queen Bee, Carla Santini, square nerd with similar music taste Ella Gerard and token love interest Sam. Makes 1 enemy, befriends 2 and mildly flirts with 3. She faces some basic issues, e.g. a mentally troubled teacher, the disapproval of Ella's parents, reality compared to her Tracy Beaker-style lies, auditioning for the school play. But then: OH NO! Total disaster. The band 'Lola' and Ella fangirl over, 'Sid Arthur' (which is a totally lame pun on Siddhartha that shouldn't be allowed) breaks up. There's going to be a final concert with an after party that they TOTALLY HAVE TO GO TO, not least because bitchy Carla is going. But this proves challenging. Thus ensues a series of hilarious and complex shenanigans through which lessons are learned (sort of) and everything magically doesn't go to shit. There are some interesting fantasy sequences of 'Lola's' with bright colours which are actually better than most of the real plot. This all plays out to dreadful teen music by Atomic Kitten, Simple Plan and LiLo herself. Waaaay.

'Lola' rhapsodises about her imaginary family history. Ella totally buys it.

You can tell that 'Lola' is the creative, quirky one because her hair is curly and Ella's is straight.

Even by LiLo's standards, her acting here is shoddy. In 'Freaky Friday' I actually kinda believed the character, stereotypical and OTT as she was, but this is just too ridiculous. Admittedly she had a script to stick to, but take a look at the picture above: who stares that wistfully at the sky when recounting some bullshit about their father dying? Not if you wanted anyone to take you vaguely seriously. Worse is the school musical, a modern adaptation of Pygmalion called 'Eliza Rocks'. Yes, really. In it, Lindsay Lohan destroys David Bowie's 'Changes' with a horrific tweenage-girl-angst-Greenday-style rendition. I died a little inside.

I did however manage to watch 'til the end. I was waiting for the alcoholic singer of Sid Arthur (chief crush of the movie) to crush 'Lola's' soul by destroying her rose-tinted view of him, but they even managed to ruin this. When he didn't live up to expectations she gained all this moral high-ground, and it was shown as a kind of "Lola has so much worldly knowledge now" thing, which was disappointing.  She should have been totally humiliated! Plus he still makes her dreams come true by dancing with her at bitch girl's party, after saying he's becoming sober now, just like that, easy. 

My favourite character was the teacher, who seemed somehow to be the most realistic figure in the whole thing. She is scarily crazy and has some sort of speech impediment, and gets a bit too involved in producing the play, which must remind everyone of one of their teachers in one way or another. She gets some of the only genuinely amusing lines in the film. And she's called Miss Baggoli, which I love and I don't know why. So yeah, you go Miss Baggoli!

All in all, not of of Lindsay's best to say the least. But I recommend watching it if you want to laugh at something utterly atrocious or cheer for Miss Baggoli.

* She changes her name to seem more interesting. This sickens me.