Bratz (2007)
Split screen, hyper editing. Picture in Picture. Very high energy but these girls look mid twenties. Turns out only half were older, and they weren’t by much. I think maybe that’s just the culture of the Bratz dolls toy line which place even more of an emphasis on fashion than Barbie, but also on individuality.
That’s the rationale for bringing this movie to the big screen – well, that and to make money, of course. The central idea was to take the four original Bratz dolls and create a high-school-based backstory for them that pits the girls against a dictator of a student body president named Meredith who keeps all the kids in school in line for her clueless principal father – played by Jon Voight – by splitting everyone into groups, an idea she gets from a “For Dummies’ looking book called “How to Run a Prison.” Naturally.
At first the Bratz fall in line with everyone else, with each girl sitting with their respective cliques. Chloe joins the soccer kids, Sasha hangs with the cheerleaders, Jade falls in with the math nerds but the fourth, Yasmine – I guess the lead character in this mess – ends up not really belonging and instead pines for the days when their interests didn’t define their friendships. After a seriously bizarre Rube Goldberg-like series of accidents leads all the girls into an absurd food-fight, they reunite and go out for the student talent show, pitting them against the student body president who later labels them “Bratz.”
In the interim, there’s a cringe-worthy romance Yasmine sparks up with a deaf boy named Dylan who learns to DJ despite his disability, a save-the-day cooking and catering montage for Meredith’s disastrous Sweet-16 birthday party and Yasmine’s discovery that she wants to be a singer despite having crippling stage fright. All comes to a head at the student talent show in an ending rarely seen on this side of 1980’s comedies with everyone singing and dancing together.
This thing isn’t the worst when it comes to story or direction, but it does sort of hold up a central conservative message at its core: Be yourself, but most importantly, be beautiful and thin. Seriously, this thing sees teenager girls as having nothing to worry about beyond friendship, finding a career path, and getting a boyfriend (all the girls pretty much pair up by the end.)
Weirdly, I think this thing was turned on its ear in 2018 when Sam Levinson decided to do his own, highly left-leaning version of “Bratz” with his movie “Assassination Nation,” a hyper-stylized teenage drama about four friends who end up fighting for individuality – and their lives – when they are blamed for data hacks that expose dirty secrets of those in their city. Whereas “Bratz” is obsessed with a squeaky-clean conservative vision of teenage life where girls gush and giggle over clothes, boys and school, “Assassination Nation” veers into edgelord wackiness, maintaining that kids are obsessed with sex, drugs, and image. They’re two movies on opposing spectrums and I have a hard time believing that’s just a coincidence. But both feel rather engineered for their political audience.
Hispanic family is crazy stereotypical. Yikes. I mean, this was straight up embarrassing to watch. The worst performance of the movie is Lainie Kazan, who is best known for playing a stereotypical Greek mother in the “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” movies. Here she plays “Bubbie,” one of the Bratz grandmother, and wow. She’s positively awful – offensive really. There’s this whole sequence where she and her grand-daughter dance around to “La Cucaracha” even though they only knew the chorus of the song. It’s painful, so much so that I wanted to show my Spanish wife but was afraid it would send her into a towering rage.
Editing is crazy! Rapid fire. Michael Bay vibes. Shoot everything with multiple, often moving cameras, then edit the shit out of it.
Cinematography and shot selection is super choice. This is pro-level stuff from director of photography Christian Sebaldt, whose resume is remarkably thin considering the strength of the work he does here. Seriously, I didn’t expect the level of skill behind the camera in this one from the guy who did Species III, Resident Evil: Apocalypse and a ton of TV credits, although I have to say those 74 episodes of CSI he did definitely would have that “Bay” feel.
Also, Sebaldt is also a veteran of director Sean McNamara projects as he worked on several of his projects as director of Photography, including such stand outs as Casper: A Spirited Beginning, Casper Meets Wendy, and something called P.U.N.K.S. starring Henry Winkler, Randy Quaid and Cathy Moriarty. He’s also listed as the cinematographer on McNamara’s upcoming film “Reagan” starring Dennis Quaid as the former President and conservative hero.
I find it interesting that:
Jon Voight seems to be buddy-buddy with director Sean McNamara, having done many projects together – Reagan, Orphan Horse, Dangerous Game: The Legacy Murders, a rash of Baby Geniuses movies that McNamara somehow took over as a franchise… it’s very odd.
Sean McNamara has this weird conservative, faith-based vibe coming out of his projects. It’s not a bad thing – it’s just there. Sony’s Pure Flix, a faith-based streaming service, picked up a series he created called “Shadrach” which is described as telling “value-driven stories tackling the issues of financial and physical hardship, love, loss, family, friendship, and faith.” He is also quoted in an article called “Catholics in Hollywood” for the St. Anthony Messenger as saying “The Catholic religion opens your heart to all people to listen to their stories, and we are all connected on some level.”
Paula Abdul was apparently going to be an executive producer on this thing, as well as Fashion Designer and Choreographer, but she was let go, apparently due to her busy schedule as at the time she was still on American Idol and expanding her QVC jewelry empire. Oy.
Skyler Shaye, who plays Chloe in the movie, is the god-daughter of Jon Voight and is also a Sean McNamara alum dating back to those Baby Genius movies! Only she continued to do those movies all the way from Baby Geniuses 2 through 2015’s “Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby!”
Bottom Five Teachers:
Fast Times at Richmont High (1982)
dir. Amy Heckerling – Mr. Hand (Ray Walston)
His speech in class makes him seem totally awful when you watch the movie as a kid. As an adult, you get a whole new perspective. But wow, Ray Walston did such a terrific job of making you dread Mr. Hand, only to later get you to respect him when he visits Spicoli at the end.
Animal House (1978)
dir. John Landis – Professor Dave Jennings (Donald Sutherland)
Many would cite Dean Wormer as the villainous educational emissary in this one, but as he’s not a teacher, he doesn’t apply for my list. In fact, my bad teacher from this one is probably considered a “good guy” by most who see this flick as he’s candid and down-to-Earth, sharing drugs and more with his students. But I find Donald Sutherland’s Dave Jennings the kind of smarmy, gross teacher that I’m sure any parent would dread: the kind that’ll get your kids into bed after opening their minds with allegedly big-brained philosophizing and then plying them further with drugs. He’s played as a goofy do-no-harm type, but when he bags Karen Allen’s Katy, I find way less fault with her than I do him – a huge mistake in an otherwise great movie.
Back to School (1986)
dir. Alan Metter – Phillip Barbay (Paxton Whitehead) and Professor Terguson (Sam Kinison)
A favorite comedy of mine from the mid-80’s, this Rodney Dangerfield vehicle has him as the father of a college freshman, played by Christine’s Keith Gordon, that ends up taking classes himself when his gold-digging wife (the fantastic Adrienne Barbeau) leaves him. When he doesn’t “have any class,” Dangerfield’s Thornton Mellon romances a professor played by Sallie Kellerman, holds banger parties in the dorm and wows during a diving competition by performing the death-defying “triple lindy.” So in this college-set story, we actually get two lousy teachers – the first being Phillip Barbay, Kellerman’s snobby boyfriend who teaches economics and who, apparently, doesn’t have a clue about how to run a business in the real world. The dressing-down by Thonton that he takes during class is one for the ages, and proof that he’s an uptight, clueless jerk. But perhaps even worse than Phillip – who acts as the movies central, pretty weak antogonist – is the completely unhinged Professor Terguson whose single teaching scene in the movie is damn near iconic. ROLL CLIP.
Anyone that tears the top off a desk during a lesson absolutely belongs on a list of Bottom Five Teachers.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
dir. Chris Columbus – Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh)
Pompous, conceited and dangerously unqualified, Harry Potter’s second-year Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher
Real Genius (1985) dir. Jennifer Coolidge – Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton)
A professor that uses his advanced-skills students at a Cal Tech-like University to further work along on a military project that can target and kill people from orbit with a laser? Yeah, it doesn’t get any worse than this guy. Also? He hates popcorn! What kind of a monster hates popcorn.
Mike’s Pick for next week: The Avengers (1998)
Mike… what happens when Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes and Sean Connery reprise a 60’s mod secret-agent TV series as a big budget action movie directed by the guy who helmed Christmas Vacation? The answer is NOTHING GOOD! Your next assignment, whether you choose to accept it or not, is 1998’s The Avengers, a movie nominated for 9 Razzie Awards and 8, lesser-known “Stinkers Bad Movie Awards ” which was a bad movie award given out between 1997 and 2007.
The movie is considered so poor that it actually has a Rotten Tomatoes score that’s lower than Bratz’s 10% fresh rating: in fact it’s half that rating as it comes in at a woeful 5%.
I saw this one in theaters and I can tell you, it’s among the very worst I ever took in on the big screen. All I can remember is feeling dreadfully embarrassed for Sean Connery as, at one point, he wears a giant panda bear costume. That might not be quite as bad as his Zardoz get-up, but it had to be humiliating all the same.