Movie Review Material Girls

Material Girls (2006) 

Directed by Martha Coolidge 

Written by Jessica O'Toole, Amy Rardin 

Starring Hilary Duff, Haylie Duff, Anjelica Huston, Lukas Haas, Brent Spiner, Maria Conchita Alonso 

Release Date August 18th, 2006 

Published August 20th, 2006 

Trashing a movie like Material Girls is like shooting fish in a barrel. You could rip this movie just from having seen the press materials. So how does a critic approach a movie like this? My tactic is to try and be understanding of the niche audience the film is meant to entertain. In the case of Material Girls, the audience is 12 year old girls. So, what do 12 year old girls have in store for them in Material Girls? Nothing they haven't seen before. Vapid, shallow starlets in haute couture learning shallow lessons about love and family and how to be yourself.

Is the movie funny? Not to me. But, will the target audience laugh?

The Marchetta sisters Ava (Haylie Duff) the oldest, and younger sister Tanzy (Hilary Duff) are privileged Hollywood socialites living in the lap of luxury thanks to the fortune provided by their late father's cosmetics company. They are the face of the company, modeling the products on billboards across the globe affording them a lavish lifestyle of parties and rich friends.

Secretly however Tanzy harbors the ambition to go college and become a chemist while Ava looks to become the wife of a famous TV star. Things go bad for the Marchetta's when a shady reporter breaks a story that Marchetta cosmetics are causing consumers to get nasty rashes. This just as a ruthless rival, Fabiella (Angelica Huston), makes an offer to buy the company, something the girls top advisor and their father's former best friend Tommy (Brent Spiner) suggests they do.

The girls are more stubborn than expected, they plan to fight for their father's company. Unfortunately the scandal bankrupts them, a fire takes their fabulous mansion and Ava's TV star fiance dumps her. This jovian series of events leaves the girls living in the ghetto with their loving maid Inez (Maria Conchita Alonzo) and seeking the help of the common people they had so long looked down their noses at.

The characters may evoke comparisons to the famous Hilton sisters or even Mary Kate and Ashley Olson, but Material Girls is no satirical gloss on excess in celeb-land. Rather, this is yet another simpleminded exercise in teen girl empowerment. The message of Material Girls is to be false and bad things will happen, be true to yourself and good things will happen. There are post cards with as much wisdom that cost a lot less than the price of a ticket to see this film.

A pair of pencil thin Hollywood sisters telling America's teens that being yourself is the true path to happiness has a falseness to it that is far too obvious to bother pointing out. But trashing a movie like Material Girls for being shallow is like criticizing the clouds for the rain. This movie was shallow from the moment it was conceived to the day director Martha Coolidge completed principle photography.

For her part Martha Coolidge does little to distinguish herself as a director. Material Girls is not a movie that will stand out on a resume, even one whose biggest highlight is the TV movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, a slight but compelling memoir. It's not that Coolidge is unskilled but her talents are put to task in Material Girls creating something so superficial and so mindless that whatever skills she has feel like wasted effort.

The Duff sisters are a pair of attractive young women who at the very least can rely on their looks to draw a crowd. It's a shame that the only pleasure derived from Material Girls comes from objectifying the two lovely young stars but you have to take what you can get when it comes to something as insipid and banal as Material Girls.

Among other very minor pleasures to be found in Material Girls it's nice to see Lukas Haas get some mainstream Hollywood work. His role as a legal aid lawyer and love interest for Haylie Duff is nothing to get excited about but I have always liked Haas, all the way back to his breakout performance as the mute child of Witness.

Shallow, mindless, a waste of film. All valid criticisms of Material Girls. All judgements I could have made without having seen the film. I did see the film. The key assessment is that this movie was not made with 30 year old film critics in mind. This is a movie made for the attention spans of the modern 12 year old girl. Whether or not they like the film I have no idea. I know that if I had a 12 year old daughter I would not want to expose her to such a vapid waste of 90 minutes.

Movie Review Star Trek Nemesis

Star Trek Nemesis (2002) 

Directed by Stuart Baird 

Written by John Logan

Starring Patrick Stewart, Tom Hardy, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden

Release Date December 13th, 2002 

Published December 12th, 2002 

I was a huge fan of the Star Trek: Next Generation TV Series. That is, until, the first movie was released. Generations was not a bad movie but it lacked the depth of the series. In fact, the film version seemed to brush aside the elements that made the series so interesting in favor of lame sci-fi action that dominates most films of the genre. Granted the series intelligent studied style that only resorted to action and effects when it had to probably doesn't translate well to the screen. So, if you have to change it so drastically why do it at all?

The second film in the series was a little better with it's adherence to a storyline begun on the TV series, but it too resorted to effects and action that we've seen dozens of times in sci-fi movies. Then came Insurrection, a true lowpoint as Trek made it's first dip into campy self parody. Cheesy effects, performances and action, Insurrection should have killed the series. Yet here we are again with another Next Generation movie and the continuing de-evolution of a once great series.

Nemesis reunites the familiar faces of the once great TV series including Captain Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), Commander Riker (Jonathon Frakes), Deanna Troy (Marina Sirtis), Data (Brent Spiner), Worff (Michael Dorn) and Jordy (Levar Burton). The crew of the Enterprise begins Nemesis celebrating the marriage of Commander Riker and Deanna Troy, a relationship that has evolved from the TV series. After a coup in the Romulan senate, Captain Picard and his crew are ordered to go to the Romulan neutral zone to begin possible peace talks with the new ruling regime from the Romulan neighbor planet Remus. Once in the neutral zone Picard and members of his crew beam aboard the Remus ship to speak to the leader Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy). It is quickly revealed that Picard was called here not for peace negotiations, but so Shinzon can reveal himself as Picard's clone.

All of this in the films first 20 minutes, the remaining screen time is dominated by dull sci-fi action and shockingly cheesy dialogue and effects. It's no surprise that Shinzon plans on blowing up the Earth and destroying the Federation, but then there are no surprises in Nemesis.

What is so shocking about Nemesis is how director Stuart Baird manages to make his talented cast look bad. The bad acting, cheesy dialogue and special effects scenes are worthy of Ed Wood. Not all the effects are that bad, in fact some of the effects are very good. However, effects that happened inside the ship (Sparks coming from engines, people pretending to fall down, forcing the poor cast to sit in their chairs and shake themselves as if they were being battered by unseen blasts) are just sad.

How is it that in the 25 some years since the first Star Trek film that none of these geniuses has been able to create a shield that doesn't degrade by 50 percent after one or two blasts? When will Jordy fix that stupid core so it doesn't blow up so quickly leaving the crew completely vulnerable? As many times as the ship has broken down and been busted up I would fire my engineer for not making some kind of improvement.

Poor Patrick Stewart. Once he was a Shakespearean trained actor and now the words “full power to forward shields” will be on his tombstone. In addition, what happened to Jonathon Frakes? At one time his Commander Riker was an oddly stoic guy with a strange sense of humor. In the past two films he has became an over the top cheeseball ham. Two movies into the Next Generation films and Frakes' charming grin is now a mask of hamminess.

The downward spiral of Next Generation from smart TV show to dull movie series is a perfect example of how money corrupts. On TV, Next Generation was forced to come up with smart scripts and stories that didn't rely on special effects because they didn't have the budget for it. Now on the big screen and flush with cash to do the effects they couldn't do on TV, the series is dominated by the effects.

Star Trek: Nemesis is not a disappointment but rather the continuation of disappointments that has been growing since the TV show was shoved onto the big screen.