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Friday, July 9, 2004
'Sleepover' clicks for the uncool and is a wakeup call for the cliques
Girls and boys are growing up faster than ever and the movies are, if anything, just catching up. "Sleepover," a lighthearted adventure about four eighth-grade girls who take on the snotty clique of class beauties in a high-stakes scavenger hunt, acknowledges the social currency of junior high girls: popularity, dating and fashion faux pas.
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While that knowledge may be discomforting for a protective uncle of three preteen girls, it surely comes as no big surprise to its target audience. They know what's at stake when a group of plucky "uncool" kids square up against a quartet of catty, backstabbing girls dolled up like glamour Barbies.
In the words of one character, "We live in a suck universe where wearing the wrong sneakers can make you an outcast."
Insecure Julie (Alexa Vega of the "Spy Kids" movies) is pushed by her ferociously protective best friend, Hannah (Mika Boorem), to accept the challenge and prove her worth, to herself if to no one else. Their girls' night out sees them letting loose in rebellious acts of mischief: missing curfew, driving without a license, sneaking into a nightclub to meet an older guy and breaking into the house of Julie's high school crush for a panty raid.
As directed by Joe Nussbaum (who made his reputation with the playful award-winning short "George Lucas in Love"), the film comes off more like a harmless game of dress-up and dare. In the sheltered suburban world of this movie, breaking the rules is ultimately harmless. Even their nightclub "date" is guaranteed safe by a matchmaking Web site.
They even learn something along the way (Don't they always?). While Julie and her buddies begin the film as status conscious as their haughty rivals, they declare solidarity with an array of underdogs, nerds and outcasts -- from the spaz skate kids to a bookish square of an English teacher -- and unite them in their odyssey against the glamour bunch.
For all of the fantasy elements that might make an adult uneasy, "Sleepover" empowers its 14-year-olds and comes through with a Cinderella story sure to charm every girl who isn't part of the cool clique.
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