LOL is shit. Just absolute, moronic, irritating shit.
I talked about this movie in January back when I was reviewing my 10 worst list, but I really haven't gone into full detail about why this piece of shit landed the no.3 spot on my list of the most infuriatingly bad movies of the past year. By the way, you are reading the title correctly, that's the name of the movie. I fear that LMFAO, OMG!, and WTF?! aren't that far behind, as it goes to naming movies. It isn't just the name that I think is a lazy name for a movie title, it's everything else about this shallow, vacuous, obnoxious and pretentious coming of age teen drama that managed to piss me off, but i'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
Before I talk about this movie, I have to mention that LOL (God, that's annoying to say) is actually a remake of the 2008 French comedy called....LOL (Laughing Out Loud). I don't know anything else about that movie, but on IMDB, the film holds a fairly decent user rating of 6.1 percent, and that the French teen comedy was well-received in it's native country. As you might expect, Hollywood saw the success and decided to put their own spin on the film for an American audience. And who better than to get teenage girls and their mothers into the theater than Hanna Montana herself, Miley Cyrus, star in the movie as the title character, Lola!
I'm not actually sure why they went with Cyrus for the title role, actually: she's not a particularly good actress, and as the returns on The Last Song proved, she doesn't have the star power to draw in a big audience outside of her success from Hanna Montana. Sure, there was the Disney animated film Bolt, but that was an animated feature which generally score well at the box office, it was released during the holidays in 2008, and Cyrus had more in a supporting role, as we only really heard her for about 30 minutes throughout the whole movie. As for the rest of the movie? Well, let me start by saying that Cyrus's character, Lola, or has her friends call her LOL for short (Get it? Her nickname is LOL, like the text language the kids are using these days and like the title of the film; its so fucking clever...) has problems.
See, despite her upper-middle class lifestyle, the fact she, her little sis, and her mother, Anne (Demi Moore) live in a fancy apartment complex in the middle of Chicago; despite the fact her mother drives her around in a highly expensive luxury SUV; and despite the fact she has friends that are just shallow and obnoxious as she is, she's still has issues. For one thing, she just found out that her mega-cute boyfriend, Chad (of course his name is Chad; almost every pretty boy in a teen movie is named Chad, Jake, Ryan, etc.) cheated on her during summer vacation, right after they cemented their love in the school's bathroom, saying Chad + Lola forever, with a heart surrounding their names. For another, now she starts developing feelings for her friend, Kyle, who looks like a missing member of Crash and the Boys. Add to it, her nosey, overprotective mother, Anne (Demi Moore), who's worried that Lola maybe hiding secrets from her and doing drugs and all that jazz (which, ironically enough, Anne and her gal pals are also smoking weed and having random hookups with her ex-hubby, played by Thomas Jane, who looks really ashamed of himself to be involved in this dungheap).
Lola isn't the only person who has drama in her life. Her BFF Ashley is hot for teacher, a trigonometric instructor who, once again, looks like a really good looking model rather than a high school teacher, but wants to gain experience before she does this with her dream guy, so she bangs the cliched perv-o who doesn't realize how much of a tool he looks like, in the bathroom stall. Lola's new crush, Kyle, is the lead singer in a band, and their lead guitarist just so happens to be Lola's ex, Chad. To add even more drama, Kyle's father is the stereotypical dickhead father, who wants his son to quit being in his band and smoking weed, grow up, get better grades and make a name for himself like he did.
Why yes, what I just described over the last two paragraphs is just one big pile of plot points and subplots that collide into one another in repetitive fashion throughout the film's 97 minutes, resulting in scenes that just drag on and on without any regard for pacing, but that's the least of the film's problems. The most glaring issue with LOL is that these characters are just not developed. There's no personality or any real traits these kids have besides being young, Caucasian and privileged. And speaking of: these obnoxious, spiteful, nasty little shits annoyed the living hell out of me, Lola in particular! Take the moment where her mother lets her have a few friends over for a get-together. She abuses said agreement, as a get together soon becomes a full-blown house party, complete with a trashed home, booze trash and condom wrappers littering the home floor. Here's the kicker, though: her friends lower Lola's grandmother's defenses by slipping a little something extra (read: strong liquor) in her drink, causing her to pass out. Excuse my French, but Lola's a nasty little bitch, and her "friends" are just as mean-spirited as she is. Explain to me how these characters are supposed to be relatable now?
If the script (which is basically a series of mini-lost episodes of The OC) is a misguided and insulting look at privileged, vain, and obnoxious teens passing off their arrogance, their self-centered impulses and deeds, and their cliched plot points as depth, then it should come to the surprise of no one, that the words and dialogue is boring, pretentious fluff to add a serious tone to a film that's already a farce. Take this 'riveting' line of monologue from Lola as she explains what love must feel like: "It's so good to love someone so much it hurts. I don't know how people survive this. Honestly, I don't." Yawn. Hell, even the band sucks, playing a song that's supposed to be a deep, meaningful love song, but it comes off as generic and uninspired.
It would be one thing if LOL was a satire on the shallow teen culture that film studios and television networks shove down our throats, but this movie confuses its vain and shallow characters as misunderstood, rebellious youth in the age of social networking, texting and the Internet. This attempt only shows that the filmmakers either don't understand youth today, or that's how their audience wants and expects them to see them as. Either way, it's deep down phony bullshit..
Zero stars out of ****
I talked about this movie in January back when I was reviewing my 10 worst list, but I really haven't gone into full detail about why this piece of shit landed the no.3 spot on my list of the most infuriatingly bad movies of the past year. By the way, you are reading the title correctly, that's the name of the movie. I fear that LMFAO, OMG!, and WTF?! aren't that far behind, as it goes to naming movies. It isn't just the name that I think is a lazy name for a movie title, it's everything else about this shallow, vacuous, obnoxious and pretentious coming of age teen drama that managed to piss me off, but i'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
Before I talk about this movie, I have to mention that LOL (God, that's annoying to say) is actually a remake of the 2008 French comedy called....LOL (Laughing Out Loud). I don't know anything else about that movie, but on IMDB, the film holds a fairly decent user rating of 6.1 percent, and that the French teen comedy was well-received in it's native country. As you might expect, Hollywood saw the success and decided to put their own spin on the film for an American audience. And who better than to get teenage girls and their mothers into the theater than Hanna Montana herself, Miley Cyrus, star in the movie as the title character, Lola!
I'm not actually sure why they went with Cyrus for the title role, actually: she's not a particularly good actress, and as the returns on The Last Song proved, she doesn't have the star power to draw in a big audience outside of her success from Hanna Montana. Sure, there was the Disney animated film Bolt, but that was an animated feature which generally score well at the box office, it was released during the holidays in 2008, and Cyrus had more in a supporting role, as we only really heard her for about 30 minutes throughout the whole movie. As for the rest of the movie? Well, let me start by saying that Cyrus's character, Lola, or has her friends call her LOL for short (Get it? Her nickname is LOL, like the text language the kids are using these days and like the title of the film; its so fucking clever...) has problems.
See, despite her upper-middle class lifestyle, the fact she, her little sis, and her mother, Anne (Demi Moore) live in a fancy apartment complex in the middle of Chicago; despite the fact her mother drives her around in a highly expensive luxury SUV; and despite the fact she has friends that are just shallow and obnoxious as she is, she's still has issues. For one thing, she just found out that her mega-cute boyfriend, Chad (of course his name is Chad; almost every pretty boy in a teen movie is named Chad, Jake, Ryan, etc.) cheated on her during summer vacation, right after they cemented their love in the school's bathroom, saying Chad + Lola forever, with a heart surrounding their names. For another, now she starts developing feelings for her friend, Kyle, who looks like a missing member of Crash and the Boys. Add to it, her nosey, overprotective mother, Anne (Demi Moore), who's worried that Lola maybe hiding secrets from her and doing drugs and all that jazz (which, ironically enough, Anne and her gal pals are also smoking weed and having random hookups with her ex-hubby, played by Thomas Jane, who looks really ashamed of himself to be involved in this dungheap).Lola isn't the only person who has drama in her life. Her BFF Ashley is hot for teacher, a trigonometric instructor who, once again, looks like a really good looking model rather than a high school teacher, but wants to gain experience before she does this with her dream guy, so she bangs the cliched perv-o who doesn't realize how much of a tool he looks like, in the bathroom stall. Lola's new crush, Kyle, is the lead singer in a band, and their lead guitarist just so happens to be Lola's ex, Chad. To add even more drama, Kyle's father is the stereotypical dickhead father, who wants his son to quit being in his band and smoking weed, grow up, get better grades and make a name for himself like he did.
Why yes, what I just described over the last two paragraphs is just one big pile of plot points and subplots that collide into one another in repetitive fashion throughout the film's 97 minutes, resulting in scenes that just drag on and on without any regard for pacing, but that's the least of the film's problems. The most glaring issue with LOL is that these characters are just not developed. There's no personality or any real traits these kids have besides being young, Caucasian and privileged. And speaking of: these obnoxious, spiteful, nasty little shits annoyed the living hell out of me, Lola in particular! Take the moment where her mother lets her have a few friends over for a get-together. She abuses said agreement, as a get together soon becomes a full-blown house party, complete with a trashed home, booze trash and condom wrappers littering the home floor. Here's the kicker, though: her friends lower Lola's grandmother's defenses by slipping a little something extra (read: strong liquor) in her drink, causing her to pass out. Excuse my French, but Lola's a nasty little bitch, and her "friends" are just as mean-spirited as she is. Explain to me how these characters are supposed to be relatable now?
If the script (which is basically a series of mini-lost episodes of The OC) is a misguided and insulting look at privileged, vain, and obnoxious teens passing off their arrogance, their self-centered impulses and deeds, and their cliched plot points as depth, then it should come to the surprise of no one, that the words and dialogue is boring, pretentious fluff to add a serious tone to a film that's already a farce. Take this 'riveting' line of monologue from Lola as she explains what love must feel like: "It's so good to love someone so much it hurts. I don't know how people survive this. Honestly, I don't." Yawn. Hell, even the band sucks, playing a song that's supposed to be a deep, meaningful love song, but it comes off as generic and uninspired.
It would be one thing if LOL was a satire on the shallow teen culture that film studios and television networks shove down our throats, but this movie confuses its vain and shallow characters as misunderstood, rebellious youth in the age of social networking, texting and the Internet. This attempt only shows that the filmmakers either don't understand youth today, or that's how their audience wants and expects them to see them as. Either way, it's deep down phony bullshit..
Zero stars out of ****
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