Crossroads (Britney Spears, Dan Aykroyd) no gummy bears
As I type this review, I am still grinning from ear to ear at the experience of having seen the new Britney Spears film Crossroads last night. I may never be allowed back into the King Square theatres again, but the joy it provided was definitely worth every raucous minute.
No one wants to go into a movie determined to hate it, but I must confess my expectations for this one were already pretty low. Still, I was going to make a concerted effort to find the merits in this latest vehicle for the Spears Promotional Roller Coaster. Not only are there blatant product plugs inserted at specific moments, but the overall impression after the movie is finished is clear: even if you can't act, as long as you have a record company to finance your career, anyone can make a movie.
Welcome to Britneyland, where Ms. Spears is the valedictorian of her graduating class(!), all set to go to medical school(!!), and the social outcast of the entire school as the unpopular kid(!!!). Her "pop" is Dan Aykroyd, who reprises his role from My Girl because Britney is determined to find out as much as she can about her long-lost mother. Believe it or not, Aykroyd's acting is even worse here than Britney's. In fact, all of the actors in the movie seem to battling for bad acting supremacy. They are aided by some dialogue that would feel out of place even on a show like Beverly Hills 90210.
Crossroads has some plot holes as vacuous as the inside of Britney's blonde head. One of these is an abrupt cut about midway through the movie, when the characters (Britney, the token popular character, and the token ugly character) realize they have no money and then the scene jumps to backstage(!) at a karaoke bar(!!), where they manage to earn over $400 from poorly singing a Joan Jett cover(!!!). What planet is this, anyway? Let's not forget the token, moody male who is along for the ride. He is supposed to seem really dangerous at first, but then we see him open up. He plays his guitar (yeah, right) and, in a scene that would make mozzarella jealous, composes piano accompaniment for Britney's poem "Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman".
I'd just like to say that the promos for this movie are disgusting, because they show only the happy road trip parts and not the fact that there is an excessive amount of mature subject matter that is completely inappropriate for younger viewers. This is really unfortunate, considering the pre-teens probably comprise the demographic who have seen the movie the most since its release.
As a twenty-something adult who has seen a few movies, though, this clunker proved a heckuva great time. Actually, to say that I had a great time during Crossroads is an understatement. It had so many laughs in all the wrong places, that it has instantly become one of the best comedies I have ever seen. None of these laughs were intentional by the filmmakers, but they provided me with one of the most memorable movie-going experiences of my life. Do not watch this disaster alone. Watch it with friends. It must be seen to be believed.
