Ah, those summer times when you and your friends went across country with a stranger to get a record deal in L.A. Anyway, In pop music star Britney Spears’ debut performance, she plays shy girl Lucy who graduated from high school and one night decides to take up a pact her and her ex-best friends made up when they were toddlers. That night, all three girls in ruins take up on their pact and one of them decides to go across country on a road trip to land a record deal in a contest from a record company.
So, somehow she manages to convince her other two friends to come along with her, because– hey– it could be fun. I beg to differ. Now, if you’ve noticed, I’m not giving the names of any of the characters, because does it matter? It was tailor-made for Ms.Spears and boy can you tell! The movie is watchable to certain extents if you’re one of those people who stop to watch car wrecks being cleaned up by police. Britney does her best to put on her cutesy wootesy face and play a shy country girl, and fails for the most part.
Britney Spears whose waning popularity is being called for a movie career, except we had to basically be fed this dreck where she’s forced to sing anyway. Britney can’t act a lick, and when she strains herself to change temperaments over the course of the film from innocent Southerner to streetwise musician, she disingenous. She gives us her fake meek voice spouting us her best lines, “I’m not sure about this,” or “I don’t like this, y’all” throughout the course of the mock girl power mishaps she and her friends experience.
The trio separate characters have their own little mini-subplots, neither of which are ever as interesting as the writers think since they’re so painfully melodramatic and tedious. One of the friends wants to be a singer, one is traveling to L.A. to visit her absentee boyfriend, and Britney is just along for the ride to rebel from her tight-knit daddy (Dan Akroyd), and is on a treck to visit her absentee mother played by Kim Catrall. She obliges audiences in a very small and inadequate role that’s irrelevant to the resolution of the film.
To be honest, the supporting characters’ subplots were a hell of a lot more interesting than Britney’s characters coming of age tale as she blossoms into a woman by the hands of the stranger with mystique who drives the girls throughout the movie. A stinker from top to bottom, “Crossroads” is just another tailor-made movie disguised to sell soundtracks and products while trying to keep Spears’ own career afloat.