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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Thirteen.

15:11 / 27.08.03

has anyone seen this yet? i saw a preview of it and i thought it was great. very real, terrific performances. the director spoke afterwards and i learned that she wrote it w/one of the lead characters, who was 13 at the time. also interesting is that they set out to make a teen comedy, and came up w/this.
i think it's playing in new york and l.a. (bleck, natch) but will be spreading to the rest of the u.s. shortly. i also just want to plug it cos it was a labor of love for those involved. it's the director's first effort, and she shared w/us how she worked so hard to get funding, and holly hunter to be in it. and it really is a good film. also noteworthy is it's about girls, which in our androcentric culture is too rare. so go check it out!

Matthew Fluxington

15:40 / 27.08.03

Hmm. I've read a lot of reviews of this film, and I will probably end up seeing it sometime pretty soon. A lot of the reviews have given me the impression that it's a pretty moralistic film, and highly exaggerated and bombastic - it's playing to the worst fears of parents, similar to Larry Clark's Kids. I'm not expecting much from it, to be honest - I'm very turned off by sensationalism in general, but I'd like to see it just so I can get a sense of it myself.

I think it's funny that you say that it's rare that teenage girls are the subject of contemporary fiction - I find the opposite to be true, and a lot of projects that I know are currently in production (such as one particular movie that Tina Fey is writing based on a rather ubiquitous New York Times Magazine article from a year or so ago about girl cliques and "alpha girls") will probably change your mind about it. It seems like a lot more film, tv, journalism, and books is being written about the experiences of contemporary teenage girls, and that contemporary teenage boys are less often the subject of much of anything in any realistic way.

20:02 / 27.08.03

Spoilers, perhaps:

I went to see it without knowing anything about it. I found it to be very realistic in many ways, the lead characters remind me of my little sister. Although it was true to life, it was also rather tedious since the focus was on children (I didn't note anything specific to feminine adolescence) at a phase where they are at their most rude, obnoxious, and easily impressed with trite things. From the bad poetry to the shoplifting, it was one caricature after another, and the fact that real adolescents often strive to be caricatures did not make it any more interesting for me. Holly Hunter was fantastic as always, and captured quite perfectly the queasily grateful tone of somebody in AA speaking to their sponsor.

Liz Phair deserves better.

All Acting Regiment

13:22 / 30.08.03

The only real way of "capturing" youth is to give a bunch of kids video cameras.

Matthew Fluxington

13:53 / 30.08.03

I don't think that's true at all, Chris. Kids play to the camera - they'll show you how they want to be seen, usually. And while that certainly says something, I don't think it's very accurate.

20:42 / 28.02.04

Saw this yesterday, and really liked it. I'm not sure if it was shot on DV, but either way, the film looked really gritty and real. While Tracy was rather annoying at times, I liked the way that no character was really wrong, they all just did what they thought was best at the time. When the boyfriend picked up Tracy from school, I was a bit concerned that he would rape her, thus giving the film an easy conclusion, in which the mom dumps him, and Tracy recognizes the error of her ways. So, I was thankful for the more ambiguous conclusion.

As for whether it was realistic, I take it as a vastly exaggerated version of what often really happens. I'm eighteen now, so it wasn't so long ago that I was in seventh grade, and, while I didn't do anything like this, there were a few people who I could certainly see doing the stuff in the film. And, I think the going from inseperable best friend to cattiness is accurate for that period. The film's promotional material seemed to indicate that this is secretly going on with every teen girl, but that's not accurate. For a few, it is.

One thing that bothered me was yet another portrait of every teenage boy as a sort of dumb skateboarder. It seems like every boy from about 14-17 in films and TV is like that.

And, being only eighteen, this was one of the first times I had to confront that "dirty old man" feeling, watching the two girls making out. Obviously it happens, but to be confronted with two attractive underage girls making out leads to a conflict between the normal, "Nice, lesbian scene" and "I really shouldn't be watching this."

01:58 / 29.02.04

Didn't really like this movie. I saw it a while ago so let me try to remember why I didn't like it.

I was annoyed by the whole Hollywood scene. Everyone was so repulsively cool. I was eventually just hoping that the girls would get slapped and punished instead of everyone crying about them. The mother was such a terrible mother and no one would call her on it.

The characters were so unlikable to me that I just didn't care about how tragic there situation was. Spoiled kids being self-destructive, that's not interesting to watch.

Can't say that the underage voyeurism made me feel guilty, but it didn't save the movie.

09:01 / 17.03.04

/rant

So I saw this earlier this week (hey, films follow a different schedule over here).

My only word can be, avoid this film. The film itself is like the worst thirteen-year-old: convinced of its own importance, exaggerating everything for effect, pretending to be grown-up but really only presenting an adolescent's idea of being grown-up.

And before I get taken down, yes, I'm well aware that it was co-written by the lead, based on her own experiences. I'm sorry for her and everything, but what really pisses me off is that it's like a Daily Mail article. Look what's happening to our kids!

Except that this is one kid, and most kids actually go through adolescence doing alright, trying things out, getting a bit pissed off about not being taken seriously, without going completely off the rails in such an obvious and completely unforeseen way.

Frankly, I found School of Rock more realistic.

/end rant