It’s just another Confession of a Teenage Drama Queen

By, Anna Luskin

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is perfect for the average audience of girls between the ages 5-10 who love Lindsay Lohan or pretty costumes. It is a lighthearted, fun-loving, unoriginal movie that targets that audience. Anyone above that age, however, will realize that it is an underdeveloped, poorly acted, over-exaggerated movie that has the same plot as a certain movie before it.

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, directed by Sara Sugarman, stars Lindsay Lohan (Freaky Friday, The Parent Trap) as Lola, a teenage girl forced to move out of NYC to a little suburban town in New Jersey. Once there, she is immediately drawn to Ella, played by new-comer Alison Pill (Pieces of April), because of their shared love for Sidarthur. Sidarthur is their favorite rock band and they are both in love with the lead singers.

Lola is determined to win over the school and make everyone love her, the only problem is that the school is already ruled by Carla Santini, played by Megan Fox. Megan Fox, according to Disney.com. stared with the Olsen Twins in Holiday in the Sun. Hoping to prove herself in her new school, Lola wins the lead role in the school musical, beating out Carla.

When Ella and Lola find out that Sidarthur is performing their last concert in NYC, they realize they have to get tickets and find a way to go to that concert. It turns out that Carla already has tickets to the after-party and the concert. Determined to go to that concert, to prove themselves once and for all, Ella and Lola go on an adventure through New York City, finding themselves in places they never could imagine with people they could only have hoped for.

That plot reminds us all of another recent movie that stars another teen queen. Hilary Duff’s The Lizzie McGuire Movie is a little too similar for comfort. They both track a teenage girl who follows a celebrity through an adventure of their lifetime. Lizzie and Lola both share the same taste in clothing, wearing almost identical outfits, and they both share the talent of singing and dancing. The choreography in both movies is remarkably similar and they both end with a show stopping performance by the main girl.

Not to mention that Duff and Lohan are always competing in the media for the spotlight. They are the same age and act in the same type of movies. According to Disney.com, the casting directors actually originally wanted Duff to play Lola. Well, if Lohan was trying to distinguish herself from Duff, this was not the way to do it.

The way the movie was hyped, the movie was going to be about a girl who tries to win over her school by winning the lead in the play. It seemed as if the movie was going to focus on her acting and her struggle to fit in. However, she wins the lead in the first 20 minutes of the movie easily and then they forget about the play altogether for the rest of the movie. It becomes a movie about Lola trying to get the tickets to her concert. Then, at the very end, it switches back to the play so she could perform.

According to Disney.com, the director wanted a movie about dreaming big and really working for your dreams. This theme is not developed at all. It is actually quite disappointing. To develop that theme, she needed to focus more on the play itself.

Sugarman’s directing abilities for camera work, however, could be shown through this movie. Through the opening, birds eye view, of Manhattan to the back shots, the front shots, the long shots, to the close up shots, she experimented with every type of shot. Each shot was placed depending on the scene. Each one really added to the affect of the moment.

Another aspect that was pretty cool about this movie was the voice overs that Lola’s character had so the movie-goer could get an inside look to what Lola was thinking.

A trick that Sugarman uses to create interest and emotion into the scene, is that she uses slow motion. In the two climaxes of the movie, when Lola is extremely upset and then when everything gets better, Lohan is shown acting in slow motion with no sound, just music. Yeah, it’s a little corny, but it works. The people definitely feel the dramatic effect.

Another problem Confessions had was that the relationships between the characters were not fully developed enough to understand them. Lohan moves to the new school, meets Ella and Sam, played by Eli Marienthal, and then by the next scene they are all buddy-buddy.

You do not see any interaction between them to justify their friendship. Then, without mentioning or showing Sam at all through out the whole movie, all of a sudden, they are together. All in all, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen wasn’t even good for what it was. Most cheesy chick flicks are fun to watch and easy to get wrapped up in. This one was too similar to The Lizzie McGuire Movie and there really was just nothing special about it.

Title: Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Alison Pill, Eli Marienthal, Megan Fox

Director: Sara Sugarman

Rating: PG for mild thematic elements and brief language

Running Time: 1 hr 36 min.