Did Brad and Jen breaking up sadden you? Keeping up to date with the media induced rivalry between Lindsay Lohan and Hillary Duff? Then this stupidity should be right up your alley. Marketed with specifically girls in mind and apparently made with only girls in mind, this piece of garbage possesses all you'd expect the studios to dish up, an annoying, vapid story with characters that are clichés and a plot that basically insults its audience intelligence. But if your teenage girl watches this and is dumb enough to believe this is true to life, then maybe you should consider adoption. Mary is this whiny brat who dreams of becoming an actress; she wants to so badly that she speaks in Shakespearean droning dialogue but never really says much, and is smart enough to know the works of George Bernard Shaw, but isn't smart enough to know that Jersey isn't that far from New York. R-i-i-ght.

Regardless, she gets into a tizzy when she is forced to move from New York to New Jersey with her family (reasons unexplained) and thus her chances of becoming an actress are ruined... well, she really is a drama queen, ever hear of something called the LIRR? It's this huge train station with trains that takes people wherever they want, and, big surprise, you can go from Jersey to New York in only three hours! Gasp! Shocking isn't it? My brother does it when he goes to job interviews. How can the writers omit such a logical detail such as that? Regardless, we're supposed to be dumb enough to believe Jersey and New York are thousands of miles away and she then moves to Jersey which the set designers make a point of dressing as a basic wasteland, and then... hmm... this is where it gets a little hazy for me. Gail Parent's script is very incoherent and the movie, well, it’s very messy and doesn’t really have a plot.

Seriously, it has zero plot structure, it's just a lot of unrelated events cut and pasted into this twisted film which gallops from incoherent gag to incoherent gag without any real sense to it. But much of it is compiled of under developed segments including Mary's rivalry with the resident school bitch, Mary trying to get into a play, and then making a play, and then trying to get to New York, and then trying to get her favorite band together, and then it goes on and on like that for a really painful one hour and forty five minutes, but while there's no thought to the script, there are the clichés, and boy do they shoot rapid fire! Mary's parents are inept and prude, and oblivious to her antics, her best friend is not as attractive as her (so she wont upstage Lohan), and is so geeky she even has these librarian glasses, her teachers are eccentric, and then there's the school's resident snobby bitches led by the really hot Megan Fox (How do we know she's evil? Lumidee's "Uh Oh" plays whenever she's on screen. Subtle like a kick in the nuts!); lets not forget the bland love interest courtesy of Eli Marienthal. These clichés are tiring and so damn predictable, so why couldn't a film adapted from a hyped book come up with something more original?

I mean let's stop and just admit that this is a vehicle for Lohan, that's all it is, this is supposed to shamelessly flaunt Lindsay Lohan's singing which I wouldn't mind--could she actually sing, and her acting is horrible. Lindsay Lohan is really, really bad in here and doesn't act well at all. We don’t buy that she's a drama queen, we don’t buy the dramatic lines she delivers, we don’t buy she's a New Yorker/debutante/bohemian, and we don't buy the rivalry between her and Carla (Fox) because the two are so hateful and obnoxious, we ask "why aren't they friends, instead?" Clearly both of the girls are completely obnoxious and utterly hateful, but halfway through the film I could understand why Carla had it in for Mary, because eventually I was rooting for her, and even I wanted to stuff her in a trash compactor and pull the lever.

Mary has to be one of the most asinine movie heroines I've ever seen in a film, and I didn't buy anything she was given during the movie. She's obnoxious, dramatic ad nauseum, and so utterly stereotypical. But I know what fans of the movie will say "You're missing the point! It's Confessions of a teenage DRAMA QUEEN, she's supposed to be like that", but you can make your character unlikable while making them likable. A really good writer would make her character unlikable in her reality but likable to the audience, but Mary is completely despicable and it’s hard to imagine why someone so self-centered and vain would have any redeeming qualities. Look at British sitcoms; the characters in British sitcoms are often unlikable and despicable people, but we manage to see beyond it and grow fond of them despite their flaws, but the writers don't pull through on it, so why should we sit through this if we don’t even like the main character?

And she realizes she likes Marianthal's character in the end capped off by a climactic kiss between them, but it's just so forced it's uncomfortable. There's no atmosphere, no chemistry, no build-up, no sub plot involving them and Eli is barely in the film to begin with. The friendship between Mary and Ella is far-fetched, because why would Ella become friends with Mary in the first place? Their first meeting is bland and forced, they have no chemistry, no compatibility, and there's no reason why they'd even become friends in the first place. And why does everyone treat Mary like a foreigner? She's from New York, that's not that far from Jersey! It's not like it's another continent or something! There's even one "dramatic" sequence where one of the bitches (I forget her name) confronts Mary and says, "You think because you're from New York, you're so special?" to which I kept screaming "She's only from New York! That's not really far! Take the train and in three hours you'll be a New Yorker too!" Gah! This film was frustrating to say the least (did you catch on?), and I just couldn't enjoy it.

There's a lot of unnecessary camp for a movie that tries to take itself seriously, and this just reminded me of “I Love Lucy” sans the entertainment, laugh out loud comedy, brains and wit. There are a lot of dumb fast motion sequences played for laughs, and It has a lot of utterly ridiculous sequences which are poor attempts at camp value and completely dreadful, like the one scene where Lohan dresses as Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, Lindsay don't give yourself too much credit. Monroe was a beauty, and you're just a mediocre tart of an actress. My main gripe, though? The themes it presents with such an undermining and clearly ridiculous message to young girls everywhere.

This is the type of movie that has that influence on girls whether they intend to or not, and within the story and morals they give us, they only help to advocate and condone girls to become spoiled obnoxious brats who whine, scheme and lie to get whatever they want and then hope to get rewarded for it, like Lohan's character does. Seriously, if you were a parent would you want your child to be like the character Mary? What is the moral of the story? Hey, all you fourteen year old girls of America, want to be the perfect girl? You have to whine, nag, cheat, lie, and scheme to get what you want, and if that doesn't work, you put up a fit and cry and then your parents will give in and reward you for acting in such a manner, and hey, when someone helps you, don't bother being grateful, or thanking anyone for helping you out, just demean them and they will understand. Great message for your future consumers, Disney, Way to go! In the end you don't take anything away from this and you're just left with this awful feeling that you've wasted an hour and forty five minutes of your life you'll never get back.

This is what I call trash. Though Lohan and Fox are fun to look at, and Allison Pill is adorable, the film (I use the term loosely) is pure mindless, senseless, and completely ridiculous fluff. I haven't had such a painful experience since "Gigli" and I'd rather have watched that again then sit through the most painful hour and a half ever. Even teen girls aren't dumb enough to like this.

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