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THE FILM
Mandy Gilbert (Ashley Tisdale) is about as popular as a wet blanket. Her controlling father (Kevin Pollak) doesn’t help her social standing, at least not until her birthday when he surprises her with contacts and the best video phone available on the market. Things take a twist for the worse though: her new phone, or more accurately, “surveillance device,” cannot just be used for showing off. Mandy now has to pretend to ‘study’ with her friend while actually attending the enormous party her crush is throwing for her.
Movies should be viewed from a distance, and this one was made specifically for pre-teens. It’s adorable and serves its intended audience well. Moreover, it was produced by ABC Family, meaning it was intended to be a television movie. No matter what, Kevin Pollak is fantastic in every role. Tisdale, this specific role suits you perfectly as a pre-teen actress. The film is entertaining, and I fear it would be an irresistible addition to any sleepover. No, I will not spend time contemplating this movie like I would for more serious films. That would be unjust. This film is a light teen comedy, and it achieves that goal quite well.
Nothing in the story makes me shake my head more than their covering of Pat Benatar’s SHADOWS OF THE NIGHT. It makes me wonder how many painful attempts at a cover we have to go through until people understand you do not touch the songs of rock legends!
THE BLU-RAY
The Blu-Ray itself is a bit of a letdown if you weigh the package as a whole. Unlike my older movies, I expected the picture transfer for this movie, which was released in 2008, to be a little better than what it is. The film is in Widescreen 1.85:1 but the quality is less than sharp. The colors are vibrant, so I do appreciate that! I just wish the images were clearer. The audio for the movie was made for a TV film, so the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 was okay. There are no major explosions or action sequences so, the sound isn’t terrible but there isn’t anything worth celebrating.
In the end, I was deeply disappointed by the Special Features.
If you’re a fan of the young stars, THE MAKING OF PICTURE may be enjoyable since there are some interviews with the young cast and it runs just under nine minutes. However, I would substitute in Kevin Pollak for the entire cast, and with his direction, it would be so much better!
Some of the features would have been bearable but CELL PHONE CONFESSIONS ARGH! It never ends! Instead of confessing things, they make things up, and do absolutely nothing with it. It is total nonsense, fluff without a point, or humor to top it off! You can’t even play them all at once, so you are faced with the dreadful task of clicking on each one individually. They’re all under a minute long, but you just can’t bare to go through them!
GR8 SCENE-SPECIFIC TEXTING Lauren Collins and Shenae Grimes, who star in the film, have provided commentary for several scenes in the movie by adding text to the scenes.
I find it pointless and downright stupid! And even prior to this, I was not in favor of text “speak” or any form of shortened text. Being presented with the option “Oblivious” for a text because I would personally prefer it to be spelled in proper English already raises some eyebrows. First, a great deal has changed since this movie was made and it filters out people of different generations. And with a full keyboard at my disposal and most phone plans offering unlimited texting, there is no need to shorten your sentences so drastically. And do you remember the little cool pagers? The messages are not so cool now, are they?
Shadow Of The Night NOOOOOOO!!!! This little feature is these girls recording the song before they film their scenes, and then filming the scene where they butcher this song. Why? Why would you ever do this? There is no chance that anyone involved in the production of this film thought, ‘Oh this is an amazing version of this song or it is so good, let’s feature it and break it down in the special features’ on it. I am at a loss for words. I honestly do not know how any of this happened.
OVERALL Bluray Rating: 2.5 Stars out of 5
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