She’s not a vocal talent and not yet —scratch that, will never be — an actress. It’s been proven with this pathetic first attempt at what cannot even be described as a “film.” There is only one thing worse than watching Britney Spears prance around on MTV for a three-minute video — paying to see her do it for an hour and half.
“Crossroads” stars Spears as Lucy, a good girl with a raging streak of suppressed hormones. The valedictorian of her class, she never had any fun because she was always too busy studying and writing poetry in her little notebook. And, no, you didn’t read that wrong.
The movie, however, does not open with Spears in one of her many sugar coated pink sundresses. Instead, she’s half naked and dancing around her bedroom to Madonna. Yeah. Either director Tamra Davis was busy making another crappy movie or she purposefully hired a really depraved director of photography. As a direct result, the gratuitous shots panning up and down Spears’ body throughout the entire movie was a disgusting attempt at probably turning half the impressionable young girls in American into bulimics or forcing any male between the ages of 13 to 80 into the theaters.
Regardless, the only thing that made me stay past the opening scene was a combination of two things: one, the chocolate chip cookie dough candy my roommate bought for us, and two, the fact that the majority of the audience didn’t have any respect for Spears or the rest of the cast whatsoever.
The entire crowd simultaneously laughed up a lung every time Spears opened her mouth — whether it was to sing her nauseating new single “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” a horrendous cover of Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” or at her extraordinarily wretched attempts at what one could not even call “acting.”
Even though it really isn’t worth regurgitating a plot summary for an unbelievably lame and overdone screenplay, the basic idea is that Spears resolves to shed her goody goody image and find her voice. She and her former best friends, the pregnant tomboy Mimi (Taryn Manning) and stuck-up homecoming queen Kit (Zoe Saldana) decide for exhausting reasons to take a cross-country road trip together to Los Angeles. On the way there, accompanied by the musician/supposed axe-murderer Ben (Anson Mount), they rekindle their lost friendship and find like, the meaning of life and stuff. Which is like, friendship, right? And also, Spears gets to lose her virginity to someone she really cares about — Ben, the pretty bad boy type who plays the guitar and thinks she’s hot.
The entire cast lacks any semblance of talent, which is no surprise. They must have been in desperate need of a role, or made to perform in “Crossroads” at gunpoint. Either way, the acting in general is terrible. Even Lucy’s father, played by Dan Aykroyd, is a mediocre mix of half-hearted disapproval of his daughter’s antics and a cloying thumbs-up of his daughter’s final escapades with the trials and tribulations of growing up.
The cheesy lines weaved in between the sexed-up scenes of Spears clad in merely a towel, or at best her prim pink outfits, are slow torture, except for when their insipid efforts at real emotion result in loud laughter. Perhaps “Crossroads” wouldn’t be the trite, gushy waste of time it is if the screenplay didn’t take a back seat to promoting Spears, pleasing her legions of obsessive fans and giving millions of young boys a reason to buy Pepsi. Unfortunately, that is exactly what it does.
As the term “Crossroads” implies, Lucy must choose between remaining a virginal, sweet young girl or cutting loose and choosing the path of her dreams. What does she wind up deciding? Well, let’s just say her character development and Spears’ success at convincing her audience that she can identify with her role is about as skimpy as the cutoff jeans she sports in a beach scene. The story is predictable, the ending virtually sickening and the disjointed endeavors at heartfelt acting only brought out a low ripple of snickers from the audience. “Crossroads” adds one more lemon to the soured pile of teen bopper flicks, and it lacks as much style and substance as Spears herself. D
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