Posted: 02/17/2002

Crossroads

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

Lots of Britney on display as she loses her big-screen virginity.

Pre-Review Rant

It wasn’t bad enough that my wife dragged me to see The Vagina Monologues on Valentine’s Day, where I felt I was in “enemy.” man-hating territory. She also didn’t want to see Crossroads, so I was sent, alone, into teenie-bopper hell to witness what I hoped would be a better than bad teen flick. It had, after all, the hottest little pixie on the planet starring in her first film so that HAD to be worth a bunch of T&A shots… What had I done to myself…? Here is the worst part: Brittany plays Lucy, the perfect high school girl of your dreams. She has been lab partners for three years (okay, we never have lab partners in high school for three years) with a guy named HENRY (insert my given name here!) The night of graduation, they get a hotel room to, you know, do IT, since they are both virgins and figure they shouldn’t be. Quick review: Henry, lab partner, hot chick, sex. I’m liking this from a personal point of view. Poor Henry: He paid for the room, got her undressed down to her passionate pink undies, she had her hands on the clasp of her bra… And she couldn’t go through with it. You just KNEW she was going to end up doing it later with some… I’ll save it for therapy, but just know that for me, it was Lisa.

Review

Brittany Spears has so often been compared to Madonna, that it seemed fitting for the first shot of the new pop icon to be lip-synching (something she is VERY used to doing from her HBO special) a song from the supreme pop icon. It took exactly two minutes for us to get to Brittany’s bedroom with her prancing around in boy-type briefs and… Oh dear, let’s not get go down that road… I’ll just say that, through the whole movie, there was plenty of Brittany to be seen, but not quite enough. Crossroads is the first feature flick for Ms. Spears, and to finish off the comparison to Madonna, I will only say that to look at it side-by-side with Desperately Seeking Susan, we can see that Spears has a long way to go to rise to Madonna’s level. For the pre- and early-teen scene, it will be a good little diversion, but for any sophisticated movie tastes, it falls somewhere on the down side of the enjoyability bell curve.

It is a road-trip movie which sets itself up pretty well: three childhood friends who have lost their friendship along the way to high school graduation end up driving to California for what seem to be good enough reasons to avoid my plausibility alarm to go off. Writer Shonda Rhimes (Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) uses lots of cliché stuff that seems to be a must in the teen flicks handbook. You will see the “I can’t help it if I’m popular” girl (Zoe Saldana from Center Stage), the “Southern white trailer-trash pregnant before the end of high school” girl (Taryn Manning from crazy/beautiful) and the “Perfect, Beautiful, Smart but not in the slightest stuck up chick” (guess who). There is also the “brooding, heart of gold hunk of a guy” that is driving them to California (Anson Mount from The Truth About Tully). There are also a lot of things I would call telegraphing the punch, where the audience is given details that will be important later: We are definitely told that Lucy is eighteen before we witness (well, sort of) her loss of virginity. We know that Lucy has spent a lot of time around cars before she is able to diagnose what is wrong with the road trip car. We are told that Lucy took a lot of choir courses in high school, so when the three girls get into a singing contest it is no surprise that she can sing. Or sight read a piece of music written from her “poetry.” It happened so often that I suddenly wished for a little David Lynch direction where you are told nothing and are expected to get it on your own. But remember the target market and I guess it was necessary.

Crossroads is pretty formula stuff, with a happy ending after some obstacles in the path. What is interesting in this movie is what we never see, but hear about: Spear’s Valedictorian speech, her conversation with her long-deserted mother who tells her she was a mistake, and how Anson and Manning ever hook up to go to California. All of these things evidently did not make it to the final cut of the movie. Probably for the better. It saved us fifteen minutes of time we never would have gotten back again. I will say that, for a bunch of relatively inexperienced actors, the performances were quite believable. Not once did I want to stuff earplugs in my ears and make up my own dialogue. There were some other interesting things from a marketing point of view: Lots of Pepsi cans, some music by N’Sync, etc. The crowd was all atwitter when they found Brittany stuff used in the film.

One funny thing I’ve got to share. During a girl-talk session, the girls are laughing with Lucy as she admits she has actually seen “one.” The audience burst out laughing when a definite preteen little girl turned to her mommy and in a loud voice asked: “What’s she seen mommy? What is she talking about?” I so wanted to turn around and say “You’ll understand when you get older, sweetie” but they don’t pay for bail at FilmMonthly.com. They just have us see movies so you don’t have to.

Hank Yuloff is a true lover of things Madonna and was hoping for a second coming in Brittany Spears. Guess that won’t be happening.

Got a problem? E-mail us at filmmonthly@gmail.com