Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen with Sequoia Holmes
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast.
- 0:02Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
- 0:05Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they
- 0:08Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, z ephibast start changing it
- 0:14Speaker 2: with the Bechdel Cast.
- 0:16Speaker 3: Hate Jamie, Hey, Caitlin, did I ever tell you about
- 0:21Speaker 3: how my dad actually died in a graphic motorcycle accident
- 0:28Speaker 3: where his body was strewn all over New York City?
- 0:32Speaker 3: Ever heard of it?
- 0:32Speaker 4: What? Oh my gosh. Now I'm actually sorry that my
- 0:35Speaker 4: mom was being a huge bitch to you a second ago.
- 0:39Speaker 4: I wasn't before, but now I am.
- 0:44Speaker 3: No, I understand, but just so you know that my
- 0:47Speaker 3: dad definitely died in that exact way.
- 0:50Speaker 4: Totally. Wow, this movie is kind of like Mean Girls,
- 0:53Speaker 4: isn't it?
- 0:55Speaker 3: At least the first act? Yeah, because I had not Well,
- 0:57Speaker 3: we'll get into this, but I was.
- 0:59Speaker 4: Like, what, it's a warm up. I think it is
- 1:01Speaker 4: a warm up, yeah for me and girls. Anyways, Welcome
- 1:05Speaker 4: to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus.
- 1:07Speaker 3: My name is Kitlyn Drante or is it Ooh wow,
- 1:12Speaker 3: it's Mary. They're a liar, Mary Durante. This is our show.
- 1:18Speaker 3: Where we analyze movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using
- 1:24Speaker 3: the Bechdel test as simply a jumping off point to
- 1:27Speaker 3: initiate larger conversations. But Jamie tell us tell me, Okay,
- 1:34Speaker 3: Caitlin aka Mary Mary, and anyone else what the Bechdel
- 1:38Speaker 3: test is?
- 1:39Speaker 4: Please yes, well. It is a media metric invented by
- 1:44Speaker 4: queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Sometimes it's called the Bechdel Wallace Test.
- 1:48Speaker 4: Originally made as a bit for Alison Bechdel's famous comic
- 1:52Speaker 4: strip Likes to Watch Out four in the eighties, but
- 1:55Speaker 4: it has since become a popular media metric. Lots of
- 1:59Speaker 4: different versions of here's the one that we talk about.
- 2:01Speaker 4: Towards the end of every episode, we require that there
- 2:04Speaker 4: be two characters of a marginalized gender with names who
- 2:08Speaker 4: talk to each other about something other than a man
- 2:11Speaker 4: for more than two lines of dialogue, preferably a meaningful exchange.
- 2:16Speaker 4: And spoiler alert. Because it's such a small part of
- 2:19Speaker 4: the show, we're not going to have much of an
- 2:20Speaker 4: issue on this show. There's not going to be a
- 2:23Speaker 4: lot of teasing things apart not for this movie. This
- 2:27Speaker 4: movie is about girls lying to each other. About kind
- 2:32Speaker 4: of whatever and that passes, and that's beautiful, and we
- 2:35Speaker 4: celebrate that this is a movie about women's wrongs. Yes,
- 2:41Speaker 4: because we are covering Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,
- 2:44Speaker 4: a two thousand and three movie starring Lindsay Lohan.
- 2:47Speaker 3: It's so true. And I also did not realize this
- 2:50Speaker 3: was a Disney movie. We've been covering so many live
- 2:53Speaker 3: action Disney movies recently.
- 2:55Speaker 4: Yeah, and so I do feel the need to repeat,
- 2:58Speaker 4: you know, I will piss on Bob Iger's grave, etc. However,
- 3:04Speaker 4: this is the show, and the show is about formative
- 3:07Speaker 4: movies and whether we like it or not, Confessions of
- 3:10Speaker 4: a Teenage Drama Queen its impact was felt.
- 3:12Speaker 3: Sure, let's get our guests in the mix. I'm very excited,
- 3:17Speaker 3: so excited to have hosts of the podcast Black People
- 3:21Speaker 3: Love Paramore. It's Sequoya Holmes. Hello, Hello, and welcome.
- 3:26Speaker 1: I'm so excited to be here talking about this movie
- 3:28Speaker 1: with you.
- 3:29Speaker 4: Oh my god.
- 3:30Speaker 3: Yes, tell us all about your relationship with this movie.
- 3:35Speaker 1: So I was a Disney Channel kid, and I would
- 3:39Speaker 1: like to specify that that is different from a Disney kid.
- 3:43Speaker 1: I was not a Disney kid. I was a Disney
- 3:45Speaker 1: Channel kid. This movie was in constant rotation on Disney
- 3:49Speaker 1: Channel at a point probably around the year came out,
- 3:51Speaker 1: maybe the next year. They had the promos everywhere. I
- 3:56Speaker 1: could say certain lines from the movie word by word
- 3:58Speaker 1: because the promos were so seared in my brain, although
- 4:01Speaker 1: I had not seen it in about fifteen years, So yes,
- 4:04Speaker 1: I watched it a lot as a kid.
- 4:06Speaker 3: Nice Jamie, how about you?
- 4:08Speaker 4: Similar deal? I think I saw this movie in theaters
- 4:12Speaker 4: when it came out. I feel like I was like
- 4:14Speaker 4: the target audience for this movie and also huge dcom fan.
- 4:19Speaker 4: We just covered Smart House, Oh, one of the al timers.
- 4:23Speaker 1: O fantastic one.
- 4:25Speaker 4: It's so good. And this movie does feel like a
- 4:29Speaker 4: high budget d com and that's a compliment, yes, where
- 4:32Speaker 4: there's a lot of like sound effects, a lot of boyings,
- 4:37Speaker 4: a lot of splats, and a lot of reinforcing the
- 4:41Speaker 4: family unit. And that is how you know you're watching
- 4:44Speaker 4: a d com. Yeah, boying, splat, mommy daddy, and that's
- 4:49Speaker 4: kind of how it goes. And I ate that shit up.
- 4:52Speaker 4: And I also loved Lindsay Lohan still do she just
- 4:56Speaker 4: had a baby.
- 4:56Speaker 3: Oh she did, Oh my goodness, she.
- 4:59Speaker 4: Did keep up, So congratulations to her. I found it
- 5:03Speaker 4: out from Jamie Lee Curtis's Instagram. Doesn't matter, but that
- 5:07Speaker 4: is who broke the news to me.
- 5:08Speaker 1: Oh my god.
- 5:09Speaker 3: Well, because she is Lindsay Lohan's mom more or less.
- 5:14Speaker 4: Absolutely, she seems to still kind of feel that way,
- 5:16Speaker 4: and I thought that was really sweet.
- 5:19Speaker 3: And at one point she was Lindsay Lohan. That's a connection.
- 5:22Speaker 3: You don't forget very.
- 5:23Speaker 1: Much that that's true.
- 5:25Speaker 4: They literally swapped. Yeah, so two thousand and three Lindsay Lohan.
- 5:28Speaker 4: I mean, I think we're kind of approaching because I
- 5:30Speaker 4: guess Mean Girls is peak Lindsay Lohan. But two thousand
- 5:33Speaker 4: and three we've got Freaky Friday and Confessions of a
- 5:35Speaker 4: Teenage Drama quhen she's firing up to reach her peak,
- 5:39Speaker 4: and I was so. I just remember loving this movie
- 5:42Speaker 4: and returning to it. Yeah, there were certain things I remembered.
- 5:45Speaker 4: I remembered the entire Sid Arthur song, which I wasn't expecting.
- 5:51Speaker 4: I remembered every lyric to the Girl was a much
- 5:56Speaker 4: Oh it's so good, so good. I didn't remember that
- 5:59Speaker 4: there were guys with blue hair dancing behind her. And
- 6:03Speaker 4: I still don't understand what happened.
- 6:06Speaker 1: I don't get there.
- 6:07Speaker 4: Was no answers were given, but I'm so excited to
- 6:10Speaker 4: talk about it. I think that some parts of it
- 6:12Speaker 4: hold up in an interesting ways, and other parts of
- 6:14Speaker 4: it are parts of the movie. Yeah, yeah, sure, Kaitlyn,
- 6:18Speaker 4: went's your history with this one?
- 6:20Speaker 3: I had never seen it. I think this was targeted
- 6:26Speaker 3: toward a younger crowd than I was at the time
- 6:29Speaker 3: of this movie coming out, because I was a junior
- 6:33Speaker 3: in high school. I think so I was like, movies
- 6:37Speaker 3: about fifteen year olds, No thanks.
- 6:39Speaker 4: Oh wow, grow Lola does need to grow up. She
- 6:43Speaker 4: has a lot to learn, but I love her.
- 6:45Speaker 3: But yeah, I had never seen it. I also get
- 6:47Speaker 3: this movie confused with Confessions of a Shopaholic, and for
- 6:51Speaker 3: a while I kind of just thought they were the
- 6:53Speaker 3: same movie. I was like, oh, yeah, Confessions of a
- 6:55Speaker 3: teenage Drama Queen. That's the one with oh my gosh,
- 6:59Speaker 3: what's her name? Fisher?
- 7:01Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's also like same naming convention, same hair color.
- 7:06Speaker 4: You know, one can't be blamed. I've never seen Concussion
- 7:10Speaker 4: of a Chopoholic.
- 7:11Speaker 3: Me either, but I think we've gotten requests for it,
- 7:14Speaker 3: so I'm sure we'll cover it someday.
- 7:17Speaker 4: I mean, maybe I remember reading those books because I
- 7:19Speaker 4: think that my mom let me read them because they
- 7:21Speaker 4: were pink question Mark and we were, you know, like
- 7:24Speaker 4: we were still figuring out how society works.
- 7:27Speaker 3: Sure we still are.
- 7:28Speaker 4: Yeah, she's like pink book. My daughter can read it.
- 7:31Speaker 4: And that's how I learned how people with Vagina's masturbate.
- 7:36Speaker 4: I didn't know. Oh, and then I read that book.
- 7:38Speaker 4: When I was like ten, I was like, you can
- 7:41Speaker 4: what That's wild interesting.
- 7:44Speaker 3: I learned you can masturbate by masturbating.
- 7:47Speaker 4: And likewise, I really needed instruction wholesome and that depressed
- 7:55Speaker 4: Compulsive Shopper really helped me out. And and this this
- 8:00Speaker 4: is an early I mean, we couldn't have known it
- 8:02Speaker 4: at the time, but this stars very early Megan Fox
- 8:06Speaker 4: role in kind of her peak mean girl era, which
- 8:10Speaker 4: I have a lot of thoughts on. I'm excited to
- 8:11Speaker 4: talk about it.
- 8:12Speaker 1: Same. Yeah.
- 8:13Speaker 4: The DDR scene, Oh say that you will about this movie.
- 8:16Speaker 4: The DDR scene. You can't take it from us.
- 8:19Speaker 1: It's so good, so funny.
- 8:21Speaker 3: Shall I get into the recap and we'll go from there.
- 8:25Speaker 4: Let's do it, and so I feel free to jump
- 8:27Speaker 4: in whenever.
- 8:28Speaker 3: H Okay, we're in New York City, we meet a
- 8:34Speaker 3: teenage drama queen Mary. That's Lindsay Lohan, although she wants
- 8:40Speaker 3: to be called Lola instead of Mary, so I will
- 8:44Speaker 3: refer to her as Lola. She is fantasizing about being
- 8:49Speaker 3: able to live in New York by herself, when in reality,
- 8:53Speaker 3: her mom, Karen played by Glenn Headley Headley Rip, she
- 8:59Speaker 3: is moving Mary and her two little sisters to a
- 9:03Speaker 3: suburb called Dellwood, New Jersey. And this is something that
- 9:08Speaker 3: Lola deeply resents.
- 9:10Speaker 4: Can I just shout out really quickly. At the beginning,
- 9:12Speaker 4: the first thing that unsettled me physically watching this movie.
- 9:17Speaker 3: Was, oh, my gosh, I know what you're gonna say,
- 9:19Speaker 3: the flip.
- 9:20Speaker 4: Yes, okay, I was unsettled by the flip at the
- 9:23Speaker 4: beginning when that's wild that you knew, I was unsettled
- 9:26Speaker 4: by the flip. Uncanny Valley stuff really does not sit
- 9:29Speaker 4: well with me. It's at the beginning when Lindsay Lohan
- 9:32Speaker 4: is like mother Darling and we're like, okay, her British
- 9:35Speaker 4: accent hasn't improved since the Parent Trap no offense. Yeah,
- 9:39Speaker 4: she's you've had half a decade but whatever. Anyways, But
- 9:42Speaker 4: then she's like, I yay, I live in New York, ghippie.
- 9:45Speaker 4: And then she flips and it is like, it's the weirdest.
- 9:49Speaker 4: I love it.
- 9:50Speaker 3: Okay, the thing that the guy does and singing in
- 9:52Speaker 3: the rain where he like runs up the wall and
- 9:54Speaker 3: then like flips backwards. She does that against a tree.
- 9:58Speaker 1: How did I miss that? Oh my?
- 10:00Speaker 3: She's like, because it's so noticeable.
- 10:03Speaker 4: She does a full on like CGI stunt. It was alarming.
- 10:08Speaker 3: It looks really weird.
- 10:10Speaker 1: How odd you have to go back?
- 10:12Speaker 4: It's really funny.
- 10:13Speaker 1: I have to.
- 10:14Speaker 4: And they've like piped in ad r over it to
- 10:17Speaker 4: try and distract. So it's just like Lindsay Lohan being
- 10:19Speaker 4: like yippie.
- 10:20Speaker 1: Wooo oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, this is I
- 10:23Speaker 1: do remember this part. Yeah.
- 10:25Speaker 4: I mean we prepped for this episode a couple of
- 10:27Speaker 4: days ago, and I've thought about it at least twice
- 10:29Speaker 4: a day since. Again, it's like the flip. How do
- 10:32Speaker 4: we not know at what point Lindsay Lohan's love interest
- 10:35Speaker 4: becomes relevant to the story, But we can't cut the flips.
- 10:39Speaker 3: It's haunted. Okay. So Lola starts at a new school
- 10:45Speaker 3: where she meets Ella. Also the two main characters being
- 10:49Speaker 3: Lola and Ella. They sound too similar. That was a
- 10:53Speaker 3: screenwriting problem anyway. Ella is played by Ellison pill Baby.
- 10:59Speaker 4: Allison pill fun.
- 11:02Speaker 3: They both love this band called sid Arthur and it's
- 11:06Speaker 3: lead singer Stu Wolf, and they become friends immediately based
- 11:11Speaker 3: on that.
- 11:12Speaker 4: That felt authentic to me at like the moment of like, yeah,
- 11:16Speaker 4: just seeing someone at school where we're like, oh my god,
- 11:18Speaker 4: one thing in common, I'm not alone in the whole world.
- 11:21Speaker 3: It's nice, yeah, for sure. And then Lola meets Carla Santini.
- 11:26Speaker 3: That's Megan Fox and her band of mean girls who
- 11:32Speaker 3: think that New York City is gross and dangerous and
- 11:36Speaker 3: they're not impressed that Lola.
- 11:38Speaker 4: Came from there, the Princesses of New Jersey. I loved
- 11:42Speaker 4: Carla's entrance is so funny. It is prompted by nothing.
- 11:46Speaker 4: She just comes in hot for no reason. She stops
- 11:49Speaker 4: in and she's like, Hi, I'm Carla Santini, and you're like,
- 11:54Speaker 4: who asked? Like I love it. They're just like Megan
- 11:56Speaker 4: Fox go and then she did yeah is.
- 12:00Speaker 1: Luigi's oh playing while she yes entering? It was such
- 12:04Speaker 1: a big song that year. Yeah, Like it was all
- 12:07Speaker 1: over mean girls. I think mean girls come out in
- 12:08Speaker 1: two thousand and four? Am I wrong?
- 12:09Speaker 4: Yeah, that's correct.
- 12:10Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, it was just Lindsay Lohan Codd.
- 12:13Speaker 4: I guess it's so weird because it plays so many
- 12:16Speaker 4: times in this movie. It's like almost every time Carla's
- 12:19Speaker 4: in this scene, you're like wow.
- 12:20Speaker 1: Every time it's like there's trouble. Uh oh Yeah, yeah.
- 12:24Speaker 4: I loved that song.
- 12:25Speaker 3: That's a good one.
- 12:26Speaker 4: It reminds me of like it's I don't know. There
- 12:28Speaker 4: are some songs to me though, I will forever associate with,
- 12:31Speaker 4: like school bus and that was a big time school
- 12:34Speaker 4: bus song.
- 12:35Speaker 1: That's fair It feels like being driven to school summer
- 12:38Speaker 1: two thousand and three to me. Yeah, wow, it's nice.
- 12:41Speaker 3: So then Ella introduces Lola to this boy, Sam, who
- 12:47Speaker 3: Lola thinks it's cute.
- 12:49Speaker 4: For some reason, Like, right, I don't know anything about
- 12:53Speaker 4: the actor who plays Sam, but even he seems confused
- 12:56Speaker 4: as to why he's in the movie. Yeah, he's just
- 12:58Speaker 4: like hi.
- 13:00Speaker 3: I'm in the scene now.
- 13:02Speaker 4: I guess wild.
- 13:04Speaker 3: So Lola thinks he's cute, but she doesn't want a
- 13:07Speaker 3: boyfriend right now because she's trying to focus on her
- 13:09Speaker 3: acting career.
- 13:11Speaker 4: Fair enough, I love that for her.
- 13:12Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, yes.
- 13:15Speaker 4: Inspiring, but don't worry. She's gonna get one anyways. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 13:20Speaker 4: like whether she likes it or not. It's the Disney movie.
- 13:23Speaker 4: It's two thousand and three. You're getting a boyfriend.
- 13:25Speaker 1: They're always lurking somewhere.
- 13:26Speaker 3: Oh, and he is.
- 13:29Speaker 4: It doesn't seem malicious like some teen movie boyfriends. But
- 13:33Speaker 4: there is just a feeling that he's just out of
- 13:35Speaker 4: frame for whenever the moment is right.
- 13:37Speaker 1: That's fair. He doesn't feel malicious. But the other guy
- 13:40Speaker 1: in the movie, Oh, harder to say. We'll get there.
- 13:44Speaker 3: I have many thoughts.
- 13:46Speaker 4: What is going on with stew and her father. I'm like,
- 13:50Speaker 4: what are these men? Yeah, that's yeah, spoiler alert. She's
- 13:55Speaker 4: got a dad and he's a fucking mess. Not that
- 13:57Speaker 4: that's a spoiler for most dads. Really, Yeah, the truth
- 14:01Speaker 4: are people, but he's pretty bad.
- 14:05Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So Lola keeps hanging out with Ella. She
- 14:09Speaker 3: goes to Ella's house. Ella's mom doesn't like Lola or
- 14:13Speaker 3: Lola's mom because she thinks that they're weird, and she
- 14:17Speaker 3: doesn't like that Lola's mom is a single mother. She's
- 14:20Speaker 3: like very rich, white, conservative suburb type.
- 14:25Speaker 1: What's funny is I feel like those moms are most
- 14:28Speaker 1: often married but still single moms, as in the dad
- 14:32Speaker 1: isn't doing anything anyways, so you're also a single mom,
- 14:34Speaker 1: so you should feel in camaraderie with Lola's mom anyways.
- 14:39Speaker 1: Totally yeah, you should be unionizing.
- 14:41Speaker 4: Actually, totally right, they should be unionizing.
- 14:46Speaker 3: But Lola's mom is a potter. She makes pottery, I
- 14:50Speaker 3: think for a living, and which.
- 14:51Speaker 4: I suspect after I just rewatched The Princess Diaries recently,
- 14:56Speaker 4: and that movie, I do still feel like they didn't
- 15:00Speaker 4: make a single mistake in it. I'm pretty sure.
- 15:03Speaker 1: That one holds up for sure.
- 15:04Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that there's tropes from the Princess
- 15:07Speaker 4: Diaries that were ripped off for years after that, including
- 15:11Speaker 4: cool artist mom. And I think that that's why we
- 15:14Speaker 4: have a potter mom a couple of years later here.
- 15:17Speaker 3: Yes, So Lola is not happy that her family is
- 15:23Speaker 3: being insulted, and then she tells the story of how
- 15:28Speaker 3: her mom and dad met and fell in love and
- 15:31Speaker 3: it was so romantic, but then her dad died in
- 15:34Speaker 3: a motorcycle accident when she was very young.
- 15:37Speaker 4: Also that she was splattered across two street. That was
- 15:41Speaker 4: a funny lot of detail.
- 15:45Speaker 3: They say that they found him strewn across ninth Avenue
- 15:48Speaker 3: and tenth. The distance between ninth and tenth Avenue in
- 15:51Speaker 3: New York City is long, so it's like it did
- 15:56Speaker 3: his bond.
- 15:57Speaker 4: Those are like the super long blocks.
- 15:58Speaker 3: Yeah, it takes like five minutes to walk from one
- 16:02Speaker 3: to the next.
- 16:03Speaker 4: And she knows that she's so shameless.
- 16:07Speaker 3: And the tone with which she's telling this is extremely goofy.
- 16:11Speaker 3: I would say, it's an extremely goofy tone, and it's
- 16:15Speaker 3: almost as if she's making it up, but we don't
- 16:18Speaker 3: know that yet.
- 16:18Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of like, I've seen, you know, varying
- 16:21Speaker 4: opinions on how dated those imagination sequences, Like I thought
- 16:26Speaker 4: they're fun though.
- 16:27Speaker 1: They're in on it, that's the thing for me. Yeah, Yeah,
- 16:31Speaker 1: it's dated, sure, but they're definitely in on the.
- 16:34Speaker 4: Joke, right, And that's where all the goofy like beep
- 16:38Speaker 4: beeps and likes. Right, Okay, so if this isn't a lie,
- 16:43Speaker 4: it's been very poor taste.
- 16:46Speaker 3: She is like making a meal out of the story
- 16:50Speaker 3: of the death of her father. Yeah, and Ella is like,
- 16:54Speaker 3: oh damn, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. Then
- 16:58Speaker 3: at school, Carla is talking about how she got the
- 17:01Speaker 3: lead in the upcoming school production of Pigmalion and how
- 17:06Speaker 3: she's envisioning a modern day retelling of the story set
- 17:11Speaker 3: in New York City where Eliza is a cashier or
- 17:14Speaker 3: something like that. But then Lola's disappointed because she was
- 17:18Speaker 3: hoping to audition for the role. But then she learns
- 17:22Speaker 3: that auditions haven't even happened yet and that Carla was
- 17:26Speaker 3: just being very arrogant. So Lola shows up to the
- 17:29Speaker 3: audition her teacher, Miss Bagoli, played by Carolcane.
- 17:35Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I feel like Carol Caine was even
- 17:38Speaker 4: better than I remembered, and I don't think I knew
- 17:40Speaker 4: who Carol Kane was the last time I saw this movie.
- 17:42Speaker 1: Was so good a highlight, truly a highlight.
- 17:46Speaker 4: And I thought that there would be I feel like
- 17:49Speaker 4: a trope that we see a lot with like goofy
- 17:53Speaker 4: teacher character is that like the main girl will give
- 17:56Speaker 4: her a makeover to like show how selfless she is,
- 18:01Speaker 4: Like it happens and clueless. It happens in a bunch
- 18:03Speaker 4: of different movies, but I like that it doesn't happen here,
- 18:05Speaker 4: and Miss Bogoli is just like allowed to be a
- 18:08Speaker 4: weirdo Carol Kane character the whole time, and we love
- 18:11Speaker 4: her and she just really cares about the drama club.
- 18:14Speaker 4: It felt true to life.
- 18:16Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, and she's in charge of this production.
- 18:22Speaker 3: She describes the adaptation that they're doing. It's this like
- 18:26Speaker 3: modern day version that Carla had been describing. So it's
- 18:31Speaker 3: clear that Carla either like influenced or probably bullied Miss
- 18:37Speaker 3: Bogolie into doing this version of the story called Eliza Rocks.
- 18:45Speaker 4: Kind of inspired of Megan Fox to think of that.
- 18:48Speaker 1: There's somebody like l names like Carla, Ella, Lola, Eliza, Bogolie,
- 18:54Speaker 1: Miss Bogoli. Like, there's way too many l's are going on.
- 18:58Speaker 3: This is a conspiracy Stu Sam that men.
- 19:04Speaker 1: All have what's her dad's name?
- 19:07Speaker 4: Oh god, do we even get to find out? I
- 19:10Speaker 4: don't know he might his name is Callum Callum step well.
- 19:14Speaker 1: Step Lola step Yeah.
- 19:17Speaker 3: Interesting. There's that scene where Lola is overhearing Carla being like,
- 19:26Speaker 3: here's what I think this version of Pygmalion should be, Like,
- 19:29Speaker 3: we don't live in England, it's not the nineteenth century.
- 19:32Speaker 3: Let's update it to the modern world and give this
- 19:35Speaker 3: like fresh, new, modern lens on it. Meanwhile, Lola is like, no,
- 19:39Speaker 3: the classics should stay classics. And I'm like kind of
- 19:42Speaker 3: on Megan Fox's side in that argument, not gonna lie,
- 19:47Speaker 3: but yeah, I just.
- 19:48Speaker 4: Feel like, why rule it out? You know, let's let's
- 19:51Speaker 4: see what she wrote down before we rule it out.
- 19:54Speaker 1: Well, naturally I can rule it out because Lola is
- 19:57Speaker 1: worldly of the world and Miss Santini is just a
- 20:00Speaker 1: little New Jersey girl. That's the whole is so.
- 20:04Speaker 4: Wild because it's like positioned as classism, but it makes
- 20:08Speaker 4: it seem like rich girls from New York are protected
- 20:11Speaker 4: class It's really You're like, what is this rivalry? I'm
- 20:15Speaker 4: pretty sure you're both fucking loaded. Yeah, I don't know
- 20:19Speaker 4: Lindsay Lohan character therefore underdog exactly.
- 20:23Speaker 3: So then Lola is like, wait, I'm at an audition,
- 20:26Speaker 3: but I don't have anything prepared. So I loved it.
- 20:33Speaker 3: She like knows what she's there for. And they're like, okay,
- 20:36Speaker 3: you sing a song, and she's like, but I didn't
- 20:37Speaker 3: prepare anything.
- 20:39Speaker 1: I love it. I loved it.
- 20:42Speaker 4: It's so good. And then cutting to pissed off Megan
- 20:46Speaker 4: foxexpression dot m P four, You're just like, yeah.
- 20:50Speaker 1: Right, because Lindsay Lohan's vocals just obviously killed it, crushed
- 20:54Speaker 1: it naturally, So of course Megan.
- 20:56Speaker 4: Changed the game.
- 20:57Speaker 1: So changed the game.
- 20:59Speaker 3: Yeah, because she has sung a song by her favorite band,
- 21:03Speaker 3: said Arthur. People are blown away that kid Sam is
- 21:08Speaker 3: in the back and he's like wow, and we're like
- 21:12Speaker 3: a star is born.
- 21:14Speaker 4: Wow, a solid high school alto.
- 21:18Speaker 1: Sam was just in the back, very high school musical coded.
- 21:20Speaker 1: There was so much about this movie that like had
- 21:22Speaker 1: other like reminded me of other movies, the two twins
- 21:25Speaker 1: in the beginning, reinding me a parent trap along with
- 21:27Speaker 1: her British accent, loom To's oh is very mean girls,
- 21:31Speaker 1: And there's some other things that I'll point out when
- 21:32Speaker 1: we get to them.
- 21:33Speaker 4: Yeah, Sam looming in the back just reinforces my theory
- 21:37Speaker 4: that he's on the side of every scene, just because
- 21:39Speaker 4: I feel like Sam is the most studio notes part
- 21:43Speaker 4: of this movie, and so I feel like they're like,
- 21:46Speaker 4: we're just going to keep this kid on set and
- 21:49Speaker 4: whenever a Disney executive calls and says, where's the boy,
- 21:52Speaker 4: We'll just throw him in there and see what he does.
- 21:55Speaker 4: Poor kid. Just write him out of the movie, leave him.
- 21:57Speaker 3: Alone, Okay, so then the cast of Eliza Rocks is announced,
- 22:03Speaker 3: Lola is nervous that Carla beat her out for the
- 22:07Speaker 3: leading role, and then there's this whole like obstacle course
- 22:11Speaker 3: where they're running through the hallway lawn forard the cast list,
- 22:15Speaker 3: and they discover that Lola has been cast as Eliza,
- 22:21Speaker 3: which she's very happy about, and then Carla's like, well,
- 22:25Speaker 3: my part, Missus Higgins, is actually more interesting, and that's
- 22:29Speaker 3: the part I actually wanted all along.
- 22:31Speaker 1: Okay, girl it.
- 22:34Speaker 4: I loved that. I was like, wow, that is extremely
- 22:37Speaker 4: drama club behavior where you're like, actually, it's Reno Sweeni's
- 22:42Speaker 4: best friend who really has the story, and you're like, yeah, totally,
- 22:46Speaker 4: surely that ever helps you sleep it go for that.
- 22:49Speaker 3: I just saw Theater Camp, which I absolutely loved. It's
- 22:53Speaker 3: so funny. Everyone should go see it, although by the
- 22:57Speaker 3: time this episode comes out it might not be in
- 22:59Speaker 3: theaters anymore. Anyway, I loved it, but there are things
- 23:02Speaker 3: about this movie where I was like, wow, I get
- 23:04Speaker 3: it now because I've seen Theater Camp.
- 23:09Speaker 1: That's very funny. Also, one of Carla Santini's little background
- 23:14Speaker 1: friends is the girl who played Casey on Life with
- 23:17Speaker 1: Derek which is also a Disney Channel Yes, a notorious,
- 23:23Speaker 1: clorious Disney Channel show that was canceled because the two
- 23:25Speaker 1: lead characters were supposed to be step siblings and they
- 23:28Speaker 1: had too much on screen chemistry and seemed sexual and
- 23:31Speaker 1: they actually were dating in real life. So I was
- 23:34Speaker 1: distracted by her a lot of the time too. I
- 23:36Speaker 1: was looking at I was like, this is the girl
- 23:38Speaker 1: that couldn't keep Life with Derek on air because.
- 23:40Speaker 4: Like they were too horny to write play steps of.
- 23:43Speaker 1: And they were actually fucking so wow.
- 23:47Speaker 4: I feel like every time I hear the Life with
- 23:49Speaker 4: Derek saga, it's like a fever dream because you're like,
- 23:52Speaker 4: that is so scary and also just so Disney. It's like, no,
- 23:58Speaker 4: they have too much chemisty. The kids are going to
- 24:01Speaker 4: get the wrong idea.
- 24:02Speaker 1: I didn't see it at all as a child. I
- 24:03Speaker 1: thoroughly did not see it. But other kids swear they
- 24:06Speaker 1: saw it. Now that we're adults, are like, no, I
- 24:08Speaker 1: always thought it was weird. No, you didn't.
- 24:09Speaker 4: You were sure Disney executives sealing children's jobs because they're
- 24:17Speaker 4: a little too good at their job. That's Life with
- 24:19Speaker 4: Derek was. I think that was like the tail end
- 24:21Speaker 4: of my Disney Channel career. Fair to the point where
- 24:25Speaker 4: I was basically watching in secret and I don't remember
- 24:29Speaker 4: seeing it, and I was too old to be watching
- 24:31Speaker 4: it so fair.
- 24:32Speaker 1: I might have been a little bit too. It was Canadian.
- 24:34Speaker 1: That was another thing about it was like a little like,
- 24:36Speaker 1: you know, Canadian television has a little weirdness to it.
- 24:40Speaker 4: Did you watch Degrassy?
- 24:41Speaker 1: I was huge, huge to Grassy.
- 24:43Speaker 4: My cousin and I the first eBay purchase that I
- 24:47Speaker 4: ever made. We did it in secret on my aunt's
- 24:50Speaker 4: account because we bought a bootleg DVD of the abortion
- 24:55Speaker 4: episode of Degrassi.
- 24:56Speaker 1: They yes, Yes, I watched it one time and I
- 25:01Speaker 1: was like, why did I never see this episode again?
- 25:04Speaker 1: They aired it one time.
- 25:05Speaker 4: On the end, I would watch a three hour documentary
- 25:08Speaker 4: about why that wasn't I mean, I know why it
- 25:11Speaker 4: wasn't shown in the US, but I want emails.
- 25:15Speaker 1: I really want to know. They showed so much wild
- 25:17Speaker 1: shit on de Grassy all of the time. I'm like,
- 25:19Speaker 1: oh my god, this is so far I don't understand.
- 25:22Speaker 4: Okay, they showed the episode of de Grassi where Emma's like,
- 25:25Speaker 4: I go to the woods and have sex for different
- 25:28Speaker 4: colored bracelets and that was just something that writer's made up.
- 25:31Speaker 1: Right and got goner rhea and she calls it a
- 25:33Speaker 1: social disease, and it's like a whole traumatizing thing. Like
- 25:36Speaker 1: if you're watching as a child, you're like, oh shit,
- 25:38Speaker 1: Like I can't fucking ever get gone ariha or something.
- 25:41Speaker 1: It's just a lot.
- 25:42Speaker 4: Gagassi is a lot and this's voice is forever locked
- 25:45Speaker 4: into my head. You gave me a social disease.
- 25:48Speaker 1: Like she really felt that with her whole heart.
- 25:52Speaker 4: Wow, Oh I love that show anyway. What oh, because
- 25:57Speaker 4: Life with Derek Canada Confessions.
- 25:59Speaker 1: Had a lot of leaves there.
- 26:01Speaker 3: Yeah, it was beautiful to watch.
- 26:03Speaker 4: But if you were born within a five year period, you.
- 26:08Speaker 3: I missed all of that. Okay, thank you for the best. Okay.
- 26:14Speaker 3: So then Lola hear's the news that her favorite band,
- 26:18Speaker 3: Said Arthur broke up because the lead singer Stu Wolf
- 26:23Speaker 3: has left the band, and she's devastated. Then there's the
- 26:28Speaker 3: DDR scene where Lola challenges Carla to a DDR contest,
- 26:35Speaker 3: during which Carla tells Lola that she has insider info
- 26:40Speaker 3: that sid Arthur is playing one final farewell concert in
- 26:44Speaker 3: New York next month. Plus there's an after party, but
- 26:47Speaker 3: it's very exclusive and it's invite only, and Lola lies
- 26:51Speaker 3: and says that she and Ella already have tickets and
- 26:56Speaker 3: invitations to the party.
- 26:57Speaker 1: Now, this scene is a maze amazing. Lola's outfit from
- 27:02Speaker 1: this scene. She has on like a backwards trucker hat,
- 27:05Speaker 1: Bary Britney Spears Circle two thousand and three and a
- 27:08Speaker 1: jersey and it is so Miley Cyrus in the twenty
- 27:12Speaker 1: three music video coded to Me Very I'm in the
- 27:17Speaker 1: club high Off Perp with my jays on, and I
- 27:22Speaker 1: loved it so much. I was thoroughly entertained.
- 27:24Speaker 4: I read that this was so intense that Megan Fox
- 27:28Speaker 4: had a body double for the DDR scene really because she's, oh, yeah,
- 27:32Speaker 4: which I don't know. I mean, I guess she was
- 27:34Speaker 4: doing like kicks and stuff. I don't know. I just
- 27:37Speaker 4: love It's like I had a whole headcanon thing when
- 27:40Speaker 4: I was rewatching that scene because this movie is written
- 27:43Speaker 4: by Gail Parent who's like a legendary writer and but
- 27:48Speaker 4: was in her sixties when she wrote this, so I
- 27:50Speaker 4: feel like she probably just like asked her like granddaughter
- 27:54Speaker 4: or grandkid, like, hey, what's something like dynamic that kids do,
- 27:58Speaker 4: so this scene isn't boring and they're like, DDDR baby.
- 28:03Speaker 3: I find it very funny. So there are a lot
- 28:06Speaker 3: of popular girl tropes present in the Carla character. But
- 28:13Speaker 3: then also she's a theater kid who's a DDR champion,
- 28:16Speaker 3: which is wow, extremely subversive for a popular.
- 28:25Speaker 4: I remember being like, it's weird that she's really good
- 28:27Speaker 4: at DDR, and people are like, this is cool. I
- 28:30Speaker 4: don't remember that being the general narrative. I remember, like
- 28:34Speaker 4: my best friend from like first grade to forever, like
- 28:38Speaker 4: was really good at DDR. But being good at DDR
- 28:41Speaker 4: first of all did not mean you were cool. And
- 28:43Speaker 4: second of all, it did not mean you were a
- 28:44Speaker 4: good dancer. That's the most important part. It just meant
- 28:46Speaker 4: you could stomp really fast.
- 28:49Speaker 1: Now, maybe it was cool because Carla Santini was into it,
- 28:51Speaker 1: and so maybe it was cool. And then New Jersey
- 28:53Speaker 1: suburb that they were from, because Carla could do it.
- 28:56Speaker 4: I could see it. I can see it, low raise jeans,
- 28:58Speaker 4: DDR perfect, terrifying.
- 29:01Speaker 1: It did look hard. I wouldn't have been able to
- 29:02Speaker 1: do it either, So I understand her having a body double.
- 29:05Speaker 1: That tells me Lindsay did not have a body double,
- 29:07Speaker 1: and she decided to do that on her.
- 29:09Speaker 3: I'm gonna learn the choreography.
- 29:11Speaker 1: Good on you, Good on you, Lindsay, couldn't be me,
- 29:14Speaker 1: but you got it.
- 29:15Speaker 4: Good for her.
- 29:17Speaker 3: Okay. So now Lola has to scramble to get tickets
- 29:21Speaker 3: to the concert, but her mom won't let her go.
- 29:25Speaker 3: So then Lola goes on a very culturally appropriative hunger
- 29:30Speaker 3: strike to talk about that, and then her dad, who
- 29:36Speaker 3: turns out to be alive. He is not dead and
- 29:40Speaker 3: smeared all over the streets of New York City at all.
- 29:43Speaker 3: He's alive. He offers to take Lola. So now Lola
- 29:49Speaker 3: is going to the concert, and Ella agrees to go
- 29:52Speaker 3: with her, and they're about to buy tickets, but oh no,
- 29:56Speaker 3: they're sold out and they have no idea how to
- 29:59Speaker 3: get an invitation to the after party.
- 30:02Speaker 1: Right, Lola says that she cannot go with her dad,
- 30:06Speaker 1: and she doesn't explain why, and it's because she's told
- 30:09Speaker 1: Ella that her dad is dead and strewn across New
- 30:12Speaker 1: York City and so she's like, no, no, no, he
- 30:14Speaker 1: can't go, and so she somehow convinces her mom to
- 30:18Speaker 1: let her and Ella go alone or Ella's parents will
- 30:22Speaker 1: be in New York City for some reason to.
- 30:25Speaker 3: Pick them up from the statation.
- 30:27Speaker 1: Yeah, and so she's like, okay, whatever, you can go.
- 30:29Speaker 1: But little does Lola know her mom has actually had
- 30:34Speaker 1: her dad go into the city and tail that stocks them.
- 30:38Speaker 4: Yes, I think this mom character is I mean, there's
- 30:41Speaker 4: not much to her, but I feel like maybe it's
- 30:43Speaker 4: just like the actor, but I feel like there's more
- 30:46Speaker 4: to this mom character than I thought, because it felt
- 30:48Speaker 4: like she's both very like she clearly loves Lola, but
- 30:53Speaker 4: is also so sick of her shit at all times.
- 30:58Speaker 4: There's no scene she's in with Lola, or she's not
- 31:00Speaker 4: completely exhausted when the scene starts, like they don't even
- 31:04Speaker 4: get into arguments because she just like doesn't have the
- 31:07Speaker 4: energy for it.
- 31:08Speaker 1: From like speaking to my own mother about raising me
- 31:11Speaker 1: as a teenager, I liked to think I was a
- 31:12Speaker 1: delight Allegedly that's how a lot of mothers feel about
- 31:16Speaker 1: their teenage children, and I was nowhere near a dramatic
- 31:18Speaker 1: as Lola. My mom was so over by the time
- 31:20Speaker 1: I was about fifteen or sixteen. She was like, I
- 31:22Speaker 1: was so overparenting you, Like it wasn't even a joke.
- 31:25Speaker 1: I was so exhausting, So sure that checked.
- 31:30Speaker 4: I liked it. Yeah, especially because she had like twins
- 31:32Speaker 4: who were young and then the most dramatic teenage shatter
- 31:35Speaker 4: of all time. It does seem exhausting. I liked the
- 31:38Speaker 4: performance because I feel like, usually the mother's either goofy
- 31:42Speaker 4: or like helicopter, but this, this one's just tired.
- 31:46Speaker 1: It's realistic.
- 31:47Speaker 4: She just wants to make pottery in New Jersey, you know.
- 31:50Speaker 1: And I'm an only child, so the two twins, I'm
- 31:51Speaker 1: sure she was over it.
- 31:53Speaker 3: Oh, I can't even imagine. Yeah, Okay, so they don't
- 31:58Speaker 3: have tickets, they don't have an invitation, but Lola is like,
- 32:03Speaker 3: don't worry, we'll go buy tickets from scalpers and we'll
- 32:06Speaker 3: figure out the rest from there. So they make arrangements
- 32:09Speaker 3: with Ella's parents to pick up the girls when they
- 32:12Speaker 3: get into the city, and then so they're all set
- 32:15Speaker 3: to go to the concert. Lola tries to pick out
- 32:18Speaker 3: an outfit. There's a toll kind of montage. She can't
- 32:23Speaker 3: figure out what to wear from her own clothes, so
- 32:25Speaker 3: she asks Sam to steal her Eliza costume so that
- 32:30Speaker 3: she can wear that, because we're like, I guess Sam
- 32:34Speaker 3: needs something to do. He hasn't been in the movie
- 32:36Speaker 3: for twenty five minutes, so that doesn't.
- 32:39Speaker 4: To be why that's there. There's a scene where I
- 32:41Speaker 4: think this has already happened at this point, but where
- 32:44Speaker 4: like I had like a meltdown and I rewound and
- 32:47Speaker 4: I was like, no, rewound ough that maicsy sound so old.
- 32:52Speaker 4: I went back in the file I was watching because
- 32:56Speaker 4: at one point you just cut to all three of
- 32:58Speaker 4: them are hanging out, and you're like, when did he
- 33:01Speaker 4: become involved with this friend? Grip and I checked, and
- 33:04Speaker 4: we don't know. We don't off screen he became friends
- 33:07Speaker 4: with them because she has a crush on him. It's
- 33:10Speaker 4: implied that Ella knows him. It didn't seem like they
- 33:13Speaker 4: were friends.
- 33:14Speaker 1: I'm confused.
- 33:15Speaker 3: We don't know who they are to each other La Sam. Yeah,
- 33:19Speaker 3: I guess they're friends, but we never see them interacting,
- 33:21Speaker 3: so we don't know they're dynamic.
- 33:23Speaker 1: No, I guess New Jersey small Town is what I'm
- 33:26Speaker 1: supposed to take.
- 33:26Speaker 4: From it, Like, I guess, So it was so confused.
- 33:29Speaker 4: I like went back and watched the scene where she's like, oh,
- 33:31Speaker 4: that's Sam, and I guess I like misinterpreted it and
- 33:34Speaker 4: have my teen movie goggles on where I thought she
- 33:36Speaker 4: was saying that's Sam, like he's he would never talk
- 33:41Speaker 4: to us, but apparently she's like, that's Sam my good friend,
- 33:45Speaker 4: but we'll be with him. It's so hard to know.
- 33:52Speaker 3: Okay, So Lola is getting her costume stolen for her. Meanwhile,
- 33:59Speaker 3: opening night for the play that I kept forgetting was
- 34:02Speaker 3: part of the movie. Opening night is in one week,
- 34:06Speaker 3: so that's coming up, and then the concert is that night.
- 34:11Speaker 3: So Lola and Ella go to the concert, but oops,
- 34:16Speaker 3: they've lost the cash to pay for the tickets from scalpers.
- 34:21Speaker 3: They try and fail to sneak in, and so Lola
- 34:25Speaker 3: is like, all right, don't worry. Well, we can still
- 34:27Speaker 3: go to the after party. So they walk sixty seven blocks,
- 34:31Speaker 3: not sure why they don't take the subway, especially because
- 34:34Speaker 3: it's pouring rain, but they walk to Soho.
- 34:38Speaker 4: They lost their money, oh.
- 34:42Speaker 1: All of it, Like damn, Nola didn't have her own wallet.
- 34:45Speaker 3: I'm confused, Yeah, don't they have like five bucks for
- 34:50Speaker 3: who knows? So they get to Soho where the party is,
- 34:55Speaker 3: and Lola's dad is there like tailing them, keeping an
- 35:00Speaker 3: eye on them, and she's like, Dad, go away, and
- 35:06Speaker 3: Ella doesn't realize that this guy who is following them
- 35:10Speaker 3: is Lola's dad. She just thinks he's like a stalker and.
- 35:14Speaker 1: She's panicked behind it. Mind you, she's freaking out that
- 35:17Speaker 1: this grown man with a dog is stalking them in
- 35:20Speaker 1: the rain, these two girls in these dresses. Yeah, I
- 35:23Speaker 1: too would be scared.
- 35:24Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember maybe having this thought when I first started,
- 35:27Speaker 4: or the last time I saw it, where it's like
- 35:29Speaker 4: a feeling of internalized shame when you're watching a movie
- 35:33Speaker 4: and they're like, we can't give up now, and just
- 35:36Speaker 4: knowing in my heart I would have given up by now.
- 35:39Speaker 1: Oh a long time ago.
- 35:41Speaker 4: I would be back at the hotel. And also they're
- 35:44Speaker 4: staying at like the Ritz or what I'm like, I.
- 35:46Speaker 3: Would be back at the hotel something like that.
- 35:48Speaker 4: Yeah, let's get out of here.
- 35:50Speaker 1: I could always just go home, not a problem. Yeah.
- 35:52Speaker 3: I love going home.
- 35:54Speaker 1: I love it. I love it so much. It's raining,
- 35:56Speaker 1: I'm going home.
- 35:57Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to walk more than five minutes. I won't, No,
- 36:00Speaker 3: thank you, I'm going home. Yeah. So they finally reach
- 36:04Speaker 3: Stu Wolf's loft where the party is, and Stu comes outside.
- 36:10Speaker 3: He's played by who I forgot to write it down.
- 36:13Speaker 4: He's played by Adam Garcia, who I don't know any
- 36:17Speaker 4: I think he's mostly at the other guy.
- 36:19Speaker 3: Okay, So Stu comes outside. He is drunk and he's
- 36:24Speaker 3: making a scene, and Lola and Ella rush over. They
- 36:28Speaker 3: find him passed out in a pile of trash bags.
- 36:31Speaker 3: They take him to a diner, and then there's this
- 36:35Speaker 3: thing where he drunkenly throws a doughnut at a cop.
- 36:41Speaker 3: So they all get taken to a police station, and
- 36:44Speaker 3: then Lola's dad has to come and bail them out,
- 36:47Speaker 3: which is when Ella learns that Lola was lying about
- 36:52Speaker 3: her dad dying in that motorcycle accident. And Ella is
- 36:55Speaker 3: furious that she made up such a horrible lie, and
- 37:00Speaker 3: Lola's like, well, I wanted to seem more interesting, and
- 37:03Speaker 3: also your family was shaming my family, so screw you.
- 37:08Speaker 3: They get cleared to leave the police station and Stu
- 37:13Speaker 3: is like, you all shall come to my party. So
- 37:16Speaker 3: Lola and Ella and one of the cops goes to
- 37:20Speaker 3: the after party.
- 37:23Speaker 4: I kind of forget that the cop tags along.
- 37:27Speaker 3: And don't remember that, Yeah, she's there still in uniform.
- 37:33Speaker 3: One of the few people of color with a speaking
- 37:35Speaker 3: role in the entire movie. And so at the party,
- 37:41Speaker 3: Lola and Ella they chat, they make up their friends again,
- 37:45Speaker 3: and they see Carla there, who is visibly pissed that
- 37:50Speaker 3: they managed to get into this exclusive party with Stu
- 37:55Speaker 3: Wolf hanging out with Stewolf.
- 37:56Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, Carla is Dia Ballacle. I forgot how she
- 38:02Speaker 4: handles the situation the next day, and a classic situation
- 38:07Speaker 4: where a problem could be resolved by having a digital camera,
- 38:11Speaker 4: which most teenage girls or many teenage girls did in
- 38:15Speaker 4: two thousand and three, just photo evidence. But what can
- 38:19Speaker 4: you do?
- 38:20Speaker 1: For some reason, I remember a digital camera. They didn't
- 38:22Speaker 1: have one though, because they didn't have photo evidence.
- 38:24Speaker 4: They did not know they didn't. I was like, I
- 38:26Speaker 4: guess that you would have to be in a certain
- 38:29Speaker 4: like class to be But it's like they're all rich.
- 38:32Speaker 1: Maybe they left it in the bag with the money.
- 38:34Speaker 4: It's true, Yeah, they left it. I love that a
- 38:36Speaker 4: critical thing happens, like where they lose all the money
- 38:38Speaker 4: mid montage. You don't see it coming, right.
- 38:42Speaker 3: Yeah. So then at the party, Lola has like a
- 38:47Speaker 3: one on one chat with Stu and she realizes that
- 38:51Speaker 3: he's not the like poet and lyrical genius and deep
- 38:56Speaker 3: thinker that she thought he was. He's actually just a
- 39:00Speaker 3: drunk loser. So she and Ella leave. Cut to them
- 39:06Speaker 3: back at school and Carla is like, Lola, you didn't
- 39:11Speaker 3: go to that party. You're lying. Also you lied about
- 39:15Speaker 3: your dad, and also your name isn't even Lola, it's Mary.
- 39:20Speaker 4: Carla is taking big swings twenty four to seven, and
- 39:25Speaker 4: she's hidden without well almost without fail. She's about to
- 39:30Speaker 4: take her biggest and most illogical swing and it almost
- 39:34Speaker 4: plays out for her, which is wild.
- 39:36Speaker 3: Right because this scene happens in a classroom, and then
- 39:40Speaker 3: the following scene happens when they're rehearsing for Eliza Roxx
- 39:46Speaker 3: and Carla humiliates her in front of the whole cast
- 39:50Speaker 3: and miss Bagoli and.
- 39:53Speaker 4: He laughs at her.
- 39:54Speaker 3: Who on it? Yeah, She's just like what a loser
- 39:57Speaker 3: this Lola is? COO.
- 39:59Speaker 4: I did kind of of laugh. I was like, you know,
- 40:01Speaker 4: miss bag is underpaid, she's allowed to laugh at her
- 40:04Speaker 4: students every once in a while.
- 40:07Speaker 3: Miss So now everyone thinks that Lola is a big liar,
- 40:16Speaker 3: and she gets is, yeah, that is so true.
- 40:21Speaker 4: Now that that justifies Carla. But she is a big lie.
- 40:25Speaker 1: She's imaginative.
- 40:27Speaker 3: But this is the one thing she didn't lie about.
- 40:29Speaker 3: But you know the cry Wolf, that whole thing.
- 40:34Speaker 1: Whoa is that? His name is Wolf?
- 40:39Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Wow another conspiracy.
- 40:42Speaker 4: If that was a coincidence and they I would be
- 40:45Speaker 4: kicking myself.
- 40:49Speaker 3: So everyone at school is against Lola. She's very depressed.
- 40:53Speaker 3: She fakes being sick so that she can get out
- 40:55Speaker 3: of like doing the play and being friends with anyone.
- 41:00Speaker 3: But then Ella shows up and she gives her this
- 41:03Speaker 3: heartfelt speech about how Lola has inspired her and how
- 41:08Speaker 3: she can't give up, and so Lola gets up and
- 41:12Speaker 3: goes to the school. The play is about to start
- 41:15Speaker 3: with Carla playing the role of Eliza, but then Lola
- 41:21Speaker 3: shows up to reclaim her role, much to Carla's dismay.
- 41:27Speaker 3: Then the play goes well, and a star is indeed
- 41:32Speaker 3: born in Lola.
- 41:34Speaker 4: Absolutely I love their unhinged adaptation. It looks good, it's fun,
- 41:43Speaker 4: it seems like it is all Lindsay Lohan narration with
- 41:47Speaker 4: some other kids in the background. I just love it.
- 41:51Speaker 4: I've never seen Pygmalion or My Fair Lady. I know
- 41:55Speaker 4: the story, I know the overarch. I just like I
- 41:58Speaker 4: feel like I've only seen like millennial coded adaptations of it,
- 42:03Speaker 4: including this montage She's all that, yeah, like stuff like
- 42:08Speaker 4: that where it's like you see clueless and then you're like, oh, Emma, right.
- 42:13Speaker 1: We should.
- 42:14Speaker 3: I bravely read Pygmalion in high school and then I
- 42:18Speaker 3: have seen the movie My Fair Lady. We should cover
- 42:20Speaker 3: it sometime on the show.
- 42:22Speaker 4: We should. I'd be down to do that anyway.
- 42:25Speaker 3: So the play happens, It goes well, and then there's
- 42:27Speaker 3: an after party at Carla's house where Stu Wolf shows
- 42:31Speaker 3: up to return things to Lola because she left her
- 42:36Speaker 3: iconic coke bottle cap necklace behind and he.
- 42:40Speaker 4: Is colluding with Lola's father. Uh huh in showing up
- 42:45Speaker 4: where you're just like her father is such a disaster.
- 42:50Speaker 1: What is going on here?
- 42:51Speaker 3: Yeah? He has a famous dog or something or is
- 42:55Speaker 3: he a children's book author? I could not understand what
- 42:58Speaker 3: his job was.
- 42:59Speaker 4: It's confusing that Stu Wolf recognizes the dog from a
- 43:04Speaker 4: cartoon when it is sort of just like, right, an
- 43:07Speaker 4: Encyclopedia picture of a dog, right, But I guess he
- 43:11Speaker 4: makes children's books about his dog.
- 43:14Speaker 1: Yeah, weird. Anyway you spin it, I'm gonna be nice
- 43:19Speaker 1: and say the Stue Wolf is twenty five, and that's
- 43:22Speaker 1: being full certain that the man is forty hanging out
- 43:27Speaker 1: with high schoolers, colluding with the father, or not very
- 43:31Speaker 1: very odd bad.
- 43:33Speaker 3: Bad, I would say bad, unbelievably weird, real bad.
- 43:38Speaker 1: Yeah, didn't look good to me.
- 43:40Speaker 3: The optics are horrible.
- 43:41Speaker 1: And if I were the parent of one of those
- 43:44Speaker 1: extras at the party, feel like, Oh, I'm so sorry.
- 43:47Speaker 1: An adult man showed up at the party and y'all
- 43:50Speaker 1: were just chilt turning a.
- 43:53Speaker 3: Necklace that eighteen girl left at.
- 43:56Speaker 1: His house overnight. Oh confused, what's happening? Yeah, please explain
- 44:01Speaker 1: it slowly. I need you to explain it slowly before
- 44:03Speaker 1: I get mad. Explained it slowly.
- 44:04Speaker 4: It's so like because there is a line between I
- 44:08Speaker 4: don't know. Like I wanted to see a Bright Eyes
- 44:10Speaker 4: concert when I was fourteen, and I didn't want my
- 44:14Speaker 4: friends to know that I wasn't allowed to go by
- 44:16Speaker 4: myself because they were like sixteen or seventeen, And so
- 44:19Speaker 4: my dad got a ticket and then stood in the
- 44:23Speaker 4: back incognito mode for the whole concert, and then waited
- 44:29Speaker 4: while I went to a diner with my friends, and
- 44:31Speaker 4: then I met up with him and went home. And
- 44:33Speaker 4: you're like, that's it's one of my my dad's the best.
- 44:36Speaker 1: That is like very very exceptional. I love that story, right, And.
- 44:42Speaker 4: Also just like my we were dad had a whole
- 44:45Speaker 4: Bright Eyes concert. Yeah, like and he was like on
- 44:48Speaker 4: the back wall with other parents who were almost definitely
- 44:51Speaker 4: doing the same thing. But it was like that was
- 44:53Speaker 4: like clutch parenting. But then there's a line where it's
- 44:57Speaker 4: like if Connor OBErs of Bright Eyes says, hey, fourteen
- 45:00Speaker 4: year old girl, let's go to a party.
- 45:03Speaker 3: Your dad should intervene and say no, adult man, you're
- 45:06Speaker 3: not gonna hang out with a child.
- 45:09Speaker 4: At a minimum, right, And then you're like, your child
- 45:13Speaker 4: will hate you for years, But it's what you have
- 45:15Speaker 4: to do. It's what you have to do. Is Lola's
- 45:19Speaker 4: dad is so invested in being mister cool dad that
- 45:22Speaker 4: he is actively endangering her so much in the space
- 45:25Speaker 4: of like forty eight hours.
- 45:27Speaker 1: Several times there's a point where they're considering walking down
- 45:32Speaker 1: the alley or something to go see where Sue is.
- 45:36Speaker 1: He's like pass out in the trash can in the alley, yeah,
- 45:38Speaker 1: and Lola and Ella are considering walking down the alley,
- 45:41Speaker 1: and I'm like, where the hell is Lola's dad. Right now,
- 45:45Speaker 1: if I'm watching my child consider following a grown man
- 45:48Speaker 1: down an alley, I don't care if I'm supposed to
- 45:50Speaker 1: be incognito. You're not walking down the fucking alley right.
- 45:54Speaker 1: There were so many times I'm like, you're negligent. What
- 45:56Speaker 1: the hell is going on with you? Are you okay?
- 45:57Speaker 3: Even the teen girls are concerned. They're like this seems dangerous.
- 46:01Speaker 3: And then Ella's like, I'm not going and Lola's like, yes,
- 46:04Speaker 3: we are.
- 46:05Speaker 1: I was like, no, I'm not, and they.
- 46:07Speaker 3: Say, oh, we're with an adult, referring to Stu Wolf
- 46:11Speaker 3: Sue Wolf.
- 46:13Speaker 1: So what is happening.
- 46:14Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll talk more about this in a bit, but yeah,
- 46:17Speaker 3: that does definitely all happen. Anyway. So Stu showing up
- 46:21Speaker 3: at the party and giving this necklace back shows to
- 46:24Speaker 3: everyone that Lola wasn't lying about meeting Stu, and so
- 46:29Speaker 3: now it's Carla's turn to be humiliated. But because Lola
- 46:34Speaker 3: is nice, she's a nice girl, she's not a mean girl.
- 46:38Speaker 3: She extends an olive branch to Carla, and then the
- 46:42Speaker 3: movie ends with Lola and Stu slow dancing at the party.
- 46:48Speaker 3: But then Stu turns into Sam and now Sam and
- 46:52Speaker 3: Lola are dancing, and she's like in voiceover saying, well,
- 46:56Speaker 3: now I have a boyfriend, because now I'm a star
- 46:59Speaker 3: and now I can make time for romance.
- 47:02Speaker 4: The end, sure, the unbelievably confusing the fact that they
- 47:07Speaker 4: end on Sam.
- 47:09Speaker 3: We're like, who is he?
- 47:11Speaker 4: Yeah right, I.
- 47:12Speaker 1: Couldn't remember his name? Was like, who am I looking
- 47:13Speaker 1: at it but don't know who that is.
- 47:15Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break and we will come back
- 47:17Speaker 3: to discuss further.
- 47:30Speaker 4: And we're back. Can we just start with Sam, Let's
- 47:33Speaker 4: get this out of the way, like just not a
- 47:36Speaker 4: necessary person.
- 47:38Speaker 1: For the movie.
- 47:39Speaker 4: And I was frustrated. I feel like I will This
- 47:42Speaker 4: is like so common in movies that are marketed at teenagers,
- 47:49Speaker 4: especially like teen girls and fems. It's just like unnecessary
- 47:54Speaker 4: boyfriend character. And it still happens. I don't think with
- 47:57Speaker 4: the same amount of frequency, but it definitely still happens.
- 48:02Speaker 4: And again, it's like we've talked about this on the
- 48:03Speaker 4: show a million times. If a relationship makes sense in
- 48:07Speaker 4: the story, if it's a part of their coming of age,
- 48:10Speaker 4: then like whatever, If the actors have chemistry, if we
- 48:14Speaker 4: know who the character is, whatever, There's movies where that
- 48:16Speaker 4: makes sense. But this movie is so about girls in
- 48:21Speaker 4: conflict or like trying to understand each other that it's
- 48:25Speaker 4: just like I've never seen I don't know, I think
- 48:26Speaker 4: this might be the most obvious one from this era
- 48:29Speaker 4: where it's like who is this guy to the point.
- 48:32Speaker 3: Where it seems like all the scenes were already written,
- 48:35Speaker 3: and then someone was like, wait, we need a love
- 48:38Speaker 3: interest to her age and a classmate of hers because
- 48:41Speaker 3: the only other one we have right now is this
- 48:44Speaker 3: creepy adult musician man. So then they were just like, Okay,
- 48:49Speaker 3: there's a guy named Sam. We can stick him in
- 48:51Speaker 3: this scene. We can stick him in this scene, we
- 48:52Speaker 3: can stick him in the third scene, and that's that's
- 48:55Speaker 3: his character.
- 48:56Speaker 4: He'll still the dress when it's like and when I
- 48:59Speaker 4: was thinking about it, I was like, ooh, I bet
- 49:00Speaker 4: in the first draft with this movie, Ella steals the
- 49:03Speaker 4: dress or like literally anyone makes so much sense? Yeah, totally,
- 49:08Speaker 4: because I really like the like sort of dual storylines
- 49:13Speaker 4: between like Lola and Ella's friendship and how they like
- 49:16Speaker 4: affect each other and also Lola and Carla's rivalry, Like
- 49:22Speaker 4: those are the sort of driving forces. Like you could
- 49:24Speaker 4: argue that if I mean, I guess like Lola will
- 49:27Speaker 4: be a drama queen no matter what. But it's like
- 49:29Speaker 4: it's when she meets Carla that like this becomes her
- 49:32Speaker 4: purpose in life is to show up this girl.
- 49:36Speaker 1: Certainly, it's like Carla's effect on both Lola and Ella
- 49:40Speaker 1: is very felt and very funny too.
- 49:42Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 49:42Speaker 1: Ella is so goody two shoes, like buy the book
- 49:46Speaker 1: until Carla says something that irritates her, And it happens
- 49:49Speaker 1: a couple of times throughout the film, and every time
- 49:52Speaker 1: she just turns into Lola, like for avere second, she's like, yeah,
- 49:56Speaker 1: we are going to be at that concert. Yeah, that's
- 49:57Speaker 1: it's idiot exactly, you know, debt, and it is so entertaining.
- 50:02Speaker 4: Yeah, they're very broad characters, but it feels like grounded
- 50:06Speaker 4: enough in reality of like making a friend that just
- 50:09Speaker 4: brings something out in you that we're not comfortable enough
- 50:12Speaker 4: to do. Like I definitely had friends like that when
- 50:15Speaker 4: I was in high school, where I was generally pretty shy,
- 50:17Speaker 4: but around the right person, I would be loud, I
- 50:20Speaker 4: would be obnoxious because you just feel like, well this
- 50:24Speaker 4: person can pull it off, let me give it a shot.
- 50:27Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like energy rubs off on you. They empower
- 50:31Speaker 3: you to like have more confidence that kind of thing,
- 50:34Speaker 3: which is like an interesting thing to examine, and that
- 50:36Speaker 3: is the focus of the movie. But it also begs
- 50:39Speaker 3: the question why is this weird romantic storyline between Lola
- 50:44Speaker 3: and Sam wedged in because it's like barely there to
- 50:48Speaker 3: begin with. I don't know. To me, it's more annoying
- 50:51Speaker 3: versus the romantic storyline between Lola and Stu Wolf is
- 50:56Speaker 3: like straight up troubling, scary.
- 51:00Speaker 4: Do we want to go over there? Do we want
- 51:02Speaker 4: to go friendships? Where do we want to go?
- 51:04Speaker 3: Let's just get the men out of the way and
- 51:06Speaker 3: my friend and then we'll go to the girlies my favorite.
- 51:10Speaker 4: Yeah, the stewold stuff is just like straight up predatory,
- 51:14Speaker 4: like in a way that I'm like, oh, the movie
- 51:16Speaker 4: seems semi aware that Sam is pointless because he's just
- 51:19Speaker 4: thrown in there and random points. I don't think that
- 51:22Speaker 4: the movie is aware that Stu is an absolute creep
- 51:28Speaker 4: in the way that he very obviously is if you
- 51:30Speaker 4: think about it for one second.
- 51:32Speaker 3: Yeah, the movie frames this is like, yeah, like they
- 51:37Speaker 3: can't really be together, but let's let Lola have this
- 51:42Speaker 3: like fantasy moment where she gets to dance with this
- 51:47Speaker 3: guy and hang out with him. She's like in his
- 51:50Speaker 3: bedroom wearing his clothes at one point, just like nasty stuff,
- 51:56Speaker 3: and the movie frames it is like, isn't this such
- 51:59Speaker 3: a fantasy that she gets to live out, which, like
- 52:04Speaker 3: a lot of teen girls would probably feel that way
- 52:07Speaker 3: because they they don't know that it's or you know,
- 52:11Speaker 3: especially in this era where this kind of shit was
- 52:13Speaker 3: so normalized, where it's like, yeah, that would be awesome
- 52:16Speaker 3: if I was like fifteen hanging out with a man
- 52:20Speaker 3: ten to fifteen years older than me. That was just
- 52:23Speaker 3: so normalized. But you know today we're like, yikes and
- 52:28Speaker 3: gross and illegal and predatory.
- 52:30Speaker 4: Well that's the thing that is like this very misguided
- 52:34Speaker 4: choice was made in an attempt like calming off of
- 52:38Speaker 4: like a huge boy band era and craze to give
- 52:41Speaker 4: some sort of wish fulfillment to like mostly tweens, because it's.
- 52:45Speaker 3: Like that's who's watching it.
- 52:46Speaker 4: With movies like this, you subtract three years from the
- 52:49Speaker 4: intended audience like tweens that would love to meet their
- 52:54Speaker 4: idols from boy bands, girl bands whoever like their fans are.
- 52:58Speaker 4: And I think that there's a way to to give
- 53:00Speaker 4: that wish fulfillment in a really fun way that doesn't
- 53:05Speaker 4: go like creepy wattpad fan fiction, which is like the
- 53:09Speaker 4: way that this goes.
- 53:11Speaker 1: I agreed. There's this actual dcom stuck in the suburbs
- 53:15Speaker 1: where there's like a pop star who's also older than them,
- 53:19Speaker 1: and it kind of gives that wish fulfilment without the
- 53:23Speaker 1: level of creepiness that we get in this film.
- 53:26Speaker 4: That's true. Oh, we should cover that someday. I really
- 53:29Speaker 4: love that one.
- 53:30Speaker 3: I think an easy fix is just to make stew
- 53:33Speaker 3: also a teenager, like that's not unheard of for there
- 53:36Speaker 3: to be like guys and boy bands who are like,
- 53:39Speaker 3: I don't know, sixteen, seventeen, seventeen, yeah, and then maybe
- 53:43Speaker 3: like age Lola up to just make them age appropriate
- 53:46Speaker 3: for each other and she can still like meet him
- 53:49Speaker 3: and see that he's like a mess or he's not
- 53:52Speaker 3: you know, this poetic genius that she thought, and that's
- 53:55Speaker 3: off putting to her. But even if that was the
- 53:58Speaker 3: case where he wasn't like an adult predator and they
- 54:01Speaker 3: were like age appropriate for each other, the way this
- 54:05Speaker 3: pans out is really weird because like she talks to
- 54:08Speaker 3: him at this party and realizes that he's not who
- 54:11Speaker 3: she thought. She's disappointed that, you know, he's not the
- 54:15Speaker 3: way he seems, and so she leaves like kind of
- 54:19Speaker 3: out of disgust. And I don't know if it's that
- 54:21Speaker 3: like his drunkenness is like the most off putting thing
- 54:25Speaker 3: to her. I don't really know, but she leaves and
- 54:28Speaker 3: she doesn't want to hang out with him anymore. But
- 54:29Speaker 3: then when he comes back to the party and he
- 54:32Speaker 3: has gotten sober, she's like, wow, now we can dance,
- 54:36Speaker 3: and it's like, well, what about I don't know, it
- 54:38Speaker 3: just like I wasn't quite sure what was happening.
- 54:42Speaker 4: And this is maybe getting really into the weeds. This
- 54:46Speaker 4: is a little thing because it's like, ultimately Stu is
- 54:49Speaker 4: a creep no matter which way you spin it, because
- 54:50Speaker 4: it's like either he's their age and there's a romantic connection,
- 54:54Speaker 4: or he's not their age and it's clearly of friendship.
- 54:56Speaker 4: You just have to make a choice for a kids movie.
- 54:59Speaker 4: But I also I felt like the way that they
- 55:00Speaker 4: presented his addiction problems were super broad and fanficky feeling,
- 55:06Speaker 4: where like it was just very like you're a drunk
- 55:10Speaker 4: and like in making that scene, like with like two
- 55:13Speaker 4: things are true here with this Stu Wolf character specifically,
- 55:16Speaker 4: where it's like they both choose to make him this
- 55:19Speaker 4: like mismatched predatory character, and they also choose to talk
- 55:23Speaker 4: about what we later learned was a serious addiction problem
- 55:26Speaker 4: in a very like shamey way that they just could
- 55:31Speaker 4: have used a second draft on the way that that
- 55:35Speaker 4: character in general has handled because I think that there's
- 55:37Speaker 4: a way you can have the pop idol who's a
- 55:40Speaker 4: mess treated, but it just felt a little undercooked in
- 55:45Speaker 4: a way that didn't serve the target audience, I guess.
- 55:48Speaker 3: Also Stu cites the reason that he decided to get sober.
- 55:53Speaker 3: He's like, I did it because Lola, you told me
- 55:57Speaker 3: I was a drunk loser and I didn't like that,
- 56:00Speaker 3: So you're the reason I got sober.
- 56:02Speaker 4: And it's like it's like I fixed you wish fulfillment
- 56:05Speaker 4: too that and yeah, it's like, oh.
- 56:08Speaker 3: I can't lose this wonderful person who I like, so
- 56:11Speaker 3: I have to get sober for them, which is similar
- 56:13Speaker 3: to like the way that when they reunite at Carla's party,
- 56:18Speaker 3: it's very much framed cinematically, is like the romantic interests
- 56:23Speaker 3: are reuniting, and like the music is swelling and it's
- 56:27Speaker 3: like he puts the necklace on her.
- 56:29Speaker 4: But then it's more confusing when it changes to the
- 56:32Speaker 4: boring yet age appropriate level, Like that comes out of nowhere.
- 56:36Speaker 4: Men in general, I feel like, don't really have a
- 56:39Speaker 4: role in this.
- 56:39Speaker 3: Don't you get them out of there?
- 56:41Speaker 2: Yeah?
- 56:41Speaker 1: That tells me that the writers did know that that
- 56:44Speaker 1: was weird and they had to change it to Sam
- 56:46Speaker 1: at the end because they're like, true, Okay, we're gonna
- 56:49Speaker 1: she's a drama queen. Maybe she's imagining this right.
- 56:52Speaker 4: It was so bizarre. Yeah, you're totally right. Like switching
- 56:57Speaker 4: him to the age appropriate person is sort of like
- 57:00Speaker 4: admission of like, but she obviously can't end up with
- 57:03Speaker 4: this guy. Yeah, and you're like, well, what if you
- 57:05Speaker 4: just wrote, first of all, this movie doesn't really need
- 57:08Speaker 4: a love interest, But if it's two thousand and three
- 57:09Speaker 4: and you need one, then just make the pop star
- 57:12Speaker 4: age appropriate question mark, make him Sam's age. Exactly why
- 57:16Speaker 4: do we need a Sam? We don't know. I think
- 57:19Speaker 4: that Sam's going to drag down her acting ambitions and
- 57:22Speaker 4: she should really think.
- 57:23Speaker 1: Twice he put her dress under the hood of a car.
- 57:27Speaker 1: Do you know how angry I would be if you
- 57:29Speaker 1: put my dress under the greasy hood of a car.
- 57:33Speaker 1: What are you good for saying?
- 57:34Speaker 4: He's so smug about it? I'm like, what do you
- 57:38Speaker 4: think you've done? That's so good?
- 57:42Speaker 3: Yeah?
- 57:43Speaker 4: I don't like Sam No, I.
- 57:44Speaker 3: Don't like samoo and I hate Stu. Yeah, all right,
- 57:47Speaker 3: shall we talk about the gals?
- 57:51Speaker 4: Well, let's talk about Dad. Oh right, I think we
- 57:54Speaker 4: almost basically just covered that in the recap. But the Dad,
- 57:58Speaker 4: I don't mind that he's there, but I disagree with
- 58:02Speaker 4: every single choice he makes. I guess that's all I'll say.
- 58:05Speaker 3: Yeah, sure that sounds cute dog though, good for him,
- 58:09Speaker 3: lovely dog dog. Okay, So aside from those unnecessary male characters,
- 58:15Speaker 3: what we have otherwise is, I mean, there were a few,
- 58:21Speaker 3: like you know, teen girly movie tropes happening. We've got
- 58:25Speaker 3: a lot of like clothes trying on montages. We do
- 58:29Speaker 3: have a centering of female relationships, whether those are friendships
- 58:33Speaker 3: or like adversaries. Yeah, we've got different kind of like, oh,
- 58:39Speaker 3: there're scenes at a mall, you know, scenes where they're
- 58:43Speaker 3: putting on makeup, but those are like goofy and like
- 58:47Speaker 3: never really a makeover scene anyway. We've got some tropes,
- 58:51Speaker 3: and we've got some subversions of tropes. I thought that
- 58:56Speaker 3: the friendship between Lola and Ella was more nuanced than
- 59:04Speaker 3: a lot of friendships I've seen in teen girl movies.
- 59:08Speaker 3: Where so movies like this usually involve a brief falling out,
- 59:14Speaker 3: like around the low point around the end of act
- 59:16Speaker 3: two of the movie of the Friends, like the two friends,
- 59:20Speaker 3: some truth gets revealed, or some fight happens where they
- 59:24Speaker 3: have a falling out, and sometimes it feels like very
- 59:27Speaker 3: contrived and it's based on like, well, girls be petty trope,
- 59:33Speaker 3: so they obviously have to fight for no reason. But
- 59:36Speaker 3: this one I thought was like very interesting where Ella
- 59:41Speaker 3: learns that Lola had lied so many Elle sounds lied
- 59:46Speaker 3: to Ella about Lola's father dying. She tries to brush
- 59:51Speaker 3: it off and then says, well, you know, I had
- 59:53Speaker 3: to seem more interesting. But also I had to defend
- 59:57Speaker 3: my mom from your snooty parent being judgmental about my
- 1:00:01Speaker 3: mom being a single mom, which might be a separate
- 1:00:06Speaker 3: conversation about like the kind of attitudes towards single moms
- 1:00:10Speaker 3: presented by various characters in this movie.
- 1:00:13Speaker 4: But yeah, but I also feel like that awareness was
- 1:00:16Speaker 4: like baked into the movie where Lola is like really
- 1:00:20Speaker 4: angry that her mom is being judged in that way
- 1:00:24Speaker 4: when it seems like the only fair point made is
- 1:00:27Speaker 4: the very early two thousands appropriated chopsticks and the hair. Now,
- 1:00:32Speaker 4: I think Ella's mom accidentally made a good point there.
- 1:00:35Speaker 4: I don't think that that was why she said it, though, right,
- 1:00:38Speaker 4: But yeah, I appreciated that. I think it's like a
- 1:00:41Speaker 4: general good thing that instead of what might be more
- 1:00:45Speaker 4: realistic is like hearing that from another parent and internalizing
- 1:00:49Speaker 4: it and feeling shame and confusion about it about your
- 1:00:53Speaker 4: own parent. Like Lola is like, no, fuck you, Like
- 1:00:56Speaker 4: you're not going to talk about my parent that way.
- 1:00:59Speaker 4: And I also like that that presents a more kind
- 1:01:02Speaker 4: of nuanced dynamic between Lola and her mom because they're
- 1:01:05Speaker 4: always in conflict, but if someone fucks with her mom,
- 1:01:09Speaker 4: she's like, not gonna hear it.
- 1:01:11Speaker 3: Love it for sure.
- 1:01:12Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:01:13Speaker 3: Yeah. And then once this lie gets revealed and they
- 1:01:17Speaker 3: have this argument about it and they make up and
- 1:01:21Speaker 3: Lola earnestly apologizes for lying, and you know, Ella says, promised,
- 1:01:26Speaker 3: you'll never lie again. She's like, I promise. But I
- 1:01:29Speaker 3: also think that Ella owes Lola an apology for like
- 1:01:32Speaker 3: being complicit in her parents' judging us absolutely of Lola
- 1:01:36Speaker 3: and her family, which Ella never apologizes for that, but
- 1:01:40Speaker 3: they make up and Ella says that, you know, she
- 1:01:43Speaker 3: was miserable until Lola came to New Jersey, and before that,
- 1:01:48Speaker 3: Ella thought that she just had to do whatever she
- 1:01:51Speaker 3: thought she was supposed to do and whatever people wanted
- 1:01:54Speaker 3: her to do, and to never question anything. But because
- 1:01:58Speaker 3: of Lola, like she felt brave enough to try to
- 1:02:01Speaker 3: be different. And also I was like, does Ella have
- 1:02:05Speaker 3: a crush on Lola? I was kind of getting vibes anyway, I.
- 1:02:12Speaker 4: Would believe it. I feel like Alison Pill, while not
- 1:02:16Speaker 4: a queer one herself that I'm aware of, played many
- 1:02:19Speaker 4: queer coded characters during this time, so maybe it's also
- 1:02:22Speaker 4: just like what we associate with this character. I love
- 1:02:28Speaker 4: Alison Pal She's so fun, true, and I like that.
- 1:02:30Speaker 4: I mean, in two thousand and three, it's going to
- 1:02:33Speaker 4: be kept ambiguous whether you like it or not. And
- 1:02:35Speaker 4: especially because what they initially bond over is like this
- 1:02:40Speaker 4: band that they're both really into, and it's just like
- 1:02:42Speaker 4: this intense friendship between girls, and we don't really know
- 1:02:47Speaker 4: how they feel beyond that. But it's like an intense
- 1:02:50Speaker 4: teenage friendship and I love seeing those. And yeah, I
- 1:02:54Speaker 4: felt like where apologies are so fumbled in these kinds
- 1:02:58Speaker 4: of movies, it felt like it was done in like
- 1:03:02Speaker 4: a more sincere way than I was expecting. I liked it.
- 1:03:06Speaker 3: I also appreciated that they become fast friends based on
- 1:03:09Speaker 3: their love of said Arthur. And then there's a scene
- 1:03:15Speaker 3: that reminded me of like when Malfoy goes up to
- 1:03:18Speaker 3: Harry Potter when they first get to Hogwart. Sorry to
- 1:03:22Speaker 3: be making a Harry Potter reference right now, but Malfoy's like, hey, there,
- 1:03:27Speaker 3: you don't want to fall in with the wrong crowd,
- 1:03:29Speaker 3: you know, you want to make friends with the right people.
- 1:03:31Speaker 3: I can help you there. And then Harry's like, I
- 1:03:33Speaker 3: can tell the wrong crowd from myself, thinks, And then
- 1:03:37Speaker 3: he becomes friends with Ron and Hermione instead Carla. Like,
- 1:03:40Speaker 3: Malfoy's over to Lola and she's like, you don't want
- 1:03:44Speaker 3: to hang out with Ella. She dresses like a politician's wife,
- 1:03:49Speaker 3: She's a dweb. You have so much potential. I can
- 1:03:51Speaker 3: help you be cool, which is also extremely like the
- 1:03:55Speaker 3: plot of Mean Girls.
- 1:03:57Speaker 4: Mean Girls. Yeah, but what if Lindsay Lohan made the
- 1:04:00Speaker 4: opposite decision exactly.
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: I think Megan Fox would be great and mean Girls.
- 1:04:05Speaker 1: I don't know if she had the acting chops at
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: the time, but if they were developed a little bit,
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: I think she would have been a great addition to
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: Mean Girls personally.
- 1:04:12Speaker 3: True. But yeah, so Lola is like, I'm gonna hang
- 1:04:16Speaker 3: out with my friend who likes the same music and
- 1:04:19Speaker 3: who is nice, and you're visibly mean and awful. So no, thanks,
- 1:04:23Speaker 3: I don't really care about being popular, like I'll make
- 1:04:27Speaker 3: my own way. And I thought that was just a
- 1:04:31Speaker 3: very nice way for the story to play out.
- 1:04:35Speaker 4: I liked it. I thought it was lovely, and I mean,
- 1:04:38Speaker 4: I guess, yeah, the other main conflict between women, although
- 1:04:42Speaker 4: we have Miss Bogoli, who is you know, a very
- 1:04:45Speaker 4: like broad character. But I guess this is like grading
- 1:04:48Speaker 4: on a curved scale. But she wasn't treated as badly
- 1:04:52Speaker 4: as I would expect her to be treated. True, Yeah,
- 1:04:55Speaker 4: so I kind of don't have an issue with it.
- 1:04:57Speaker 4: Like she was obviously very goofy, but also like she's
- 1:05:01Speaker 4: good at her job. She wasn't like completely I don't know.
- 1:05:04Speaker 4: I feel like sometimes adult characters in kids movies and
- 1:05:08Speaker 4: this makes sense, but they're just treated as like on
- 1:05:11Speaker 4: another planet, like so goofy, and.
- 1:05:14Speaker 3: She's like goofy but also not grounded like I would say,
- 1:05:18Speaker 3: like goofy, but ground's perfect. She was perfect.
- 1:05:21Speaker 4: It was Carol Kane with the tightest perm anyone's ever seen,
- 1:05:25Speaker 4: Like just really good.
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: So I laughed out loud repeatedly at her.
- 1:05:30Speaker 4: So when she does the like that, I laughed so hard.
- 1:05:35Speaker 4: It feels like good teacher representation.
- 1:05:37Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
- 1:05:38Speaker 3: I think that she needs to learn to grow a
- 1:05:40Speaker 3: bit of a spine though, because she lets Carla steamroll
- 1:05:44Speaker 3: her in the adaptation of Pigmillion that they're doing, and
- 1:05:48Speaker 3: then she like was again laughing along with Carla against
- 1:05:53Speaker 3: Lola towards the end.
- 1:05:56Speaker 4: I just can't be mad at her.
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: I care.
- 1:05:58Speaker 4: Wait, I just feel like should be allowed to drink
- 1:06:01Speaker 4: at school one day a week, and they should be
- 1:06:03Speaker 4: allowed to laugh at their students sometimes unless they are
- 1:06:06Speaker 4: given a raise.
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: Wait, there's that one part in the auditorium where Lola
- 1:06:11Speaker 1: asked Miss Bogoli if the adaptation was her idea because
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: Carla had been touting it as her own idea, and
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: Miss Bogolis like, of course, it's my idea. Why would
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: you ask me if it's my idea or not? And like,
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: it's unclear who was lying there to me?
- 1:06:25Speaker 3: And I think it was Carla, right, because it could
- 1:06:28Speaker 3: have been miss Bogoli who was like, I rewrote this
- 1:06:32Speaker 3: whole thing.
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: I think it was miss Bogoli's idea.
- 1:06:35Speaker 3: I interpreted it as Carla bullying off screen, Miss Bogoli,
- 1:06:40Speaker 3: I see how you can get to do that, But
- 1:06:43Speaker 3: it's open it could have been the other way around.
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: Yeah, because her and Lindsay Lohan's character exchanged. This look
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: as if like Carla's uncomfortable that she has seen right now.
- 1:06:53Speaker 4: That Carla is certainly not lie herself. It is so wild.
- 1:06:57Speaker 4: I feel like, in some ways it does makes sense
- 1:07:00Speaker 4: to me that Carla and Lola don't like each other
- 1:07:03Speaker 4: because they are very similar in positive and also deeply
- 1:07:08Speaker 4: negative ways where you're like, I, yeah, they're basically the
- 1:07:12Speaker 4: same character, but we are just told to like one
- 1:07:15Speaker 4: of them right, where they both are like rich white
- 1:07:19Speaker 4: girls who are into theater and DDR and telling lies
- 1:07:24Speaker 4: like they are doing the same thing and they like
- 1:07:26Speaker 4: the same band and.
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: Have a lot of unearned arrogance.
- 1:07:32Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yes, so it's like they're basically the same character.
- 1:07:36Speaker 4: But this kind of this is not a fully big thought.
- 1:07:38Speaker 4: I feel like it's been expanded on more thoughtfully in
- 1:07:43Speaker 4: other places. But just how like Megan Fox is positioned,
- 1:07:48Speaker 4: especially in her early movies. We talked about this a
- 1:07:51Speaker 4: million years ago in our Transformers episode, but she's more
- 1:07:54Speaker 4: positioned as the girl next door. I think in her
- 1:07:56Speaker 4: early roles, which include this. Before this, I think she
- 1:07:59Speaker 4: was in a she was the bully in a Mary
- 1:08:01Speaker 4: Kayden Ashley movie. And like, I think that the way
- 1:08:05Speaker 4: that Megan Fox was treated repeatedly and her early career
- 1:08:10Speaker 4: especially is like too pretty or too conventionally pretty to
- 1:08:14Speaker 4: be sympathetic too, and like you have to hate her
- 1:08:18Speaker 4: because she is too pretty to be quote unquote relatable,
- 1:08:23Speaker 4: and in a way that is like ends up becoming
- 1:08:27Speaker 4: cruel to Megan Fox in a way that I think that,
- 1:08:29Speaker 4: especially in the two thousands, felt like women frequently joined
- 1:08:34Speaker 4: in on and so it's just like a dog pile
- 1:08:37Speaker 4: from all sides. And this role, Like, I don't think
- 1:08:40Speaker 4: that this role like stands out in her treatment of
- 1:08:43Speaker 4: that way, but it feels kind of consistent in the
- 1:08:46Speaker 4: way she was treated.
- 1:08:47Speaker 1: Definitely Also, I think there's always, or often not always,
- 1:08:54Speaker 1: the main protagonist generally has light hair, and the mean
- 1:08:58Speaker 1: girl generally is brunette with dark features.
- 1:09:01Speaker 4: Going.
- 1:09:02Speaker 3: That's like the early animated Disney movie formula too. It's
- 1:09:07Speaker 3: true blonde princesses and dark everyone's white. But yeah, of
- 1:09:13Speaker 3: course the villains have black hair, right, absolutely.
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: And I wonder if this is like if this was
- 1:09:19Speaker 1: originally a d com Disney Channel original movie with a
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: big budget and Lindsay Lohan, who was really popping at
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: the time, and so they gave it a theastrical release
- 1:09:27Speaker 1: and called it a real movie.
- 1:09:29Speaker 4: I read that this role in a way that I'm like, wow,
- 1:09:32Speaker 4: there were three teenage girls at this time, allegedly, and
- 1:09:36Speaker 4: they were Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, and Hillary Duff. This
- 1:09:40Speaker 4: part was originally written for Hillary Duff, yes, and then
- 1:09:44Speaker 4: given to Lindsay Lohan. I think a smarter move. I
- 1:09:48Speaker 4: don't know that Hillary Duff can play dramatic drama arrogance. Ye, Like,
- 1:09:53Speaker 4: she's very pure in her screen presence at least everywhere,
- 1:09:56Speaker 4: and still now I like follow her on Oh my.
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: God, raise every voice I don't remember, but yes, that's.
- 1:10:02Speaker 4: Wait, someone in this movie is in Raise Your Voice.
- 1:10:04Speaker 4: I think it might be Sam. Sure, I think Sam
- 1:10:07Speaker 4: may also be the boy from Raise Your Voice. Anyways,
- 1:10:11Speaker 4: it doesn't matter. That movie is dog.
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: Shit, real bad. It's so bad. I saw that one
- 1:10:17Speaker 1: at theaters and I remember leaving like what. I was
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: a kid, and I was like, this was really bad.
- 1:10:22Speaker 4: It was also like there's a I just remember that
- 1:10:25Speaker 4: it's really sad in addition to being really bad, and
- 1:10:28Speaker 4: you're like, what are.
- 1:10:29Speaker 3: We doing here?
- 1:10:30Speaker 4: Anyways, I'm glad the part went to Lindsay low Hid.
- 1:10:33Speaker 4: But yes, it's so broadly written that you're like the
- 1:10:36Speaker 4: bully character. We don't get an insight into her really
- 1:10:40Speaker 4: at all, to the point where, like you were saying,
- 1:10:42Speaker 4: this is a quite like it's hard to know when
- 1:10:44Speaker 4: she's telling the truth or not. When we always know
- 1:10:47Speaker 4: whether Lola is telling the truth or not.
- 1:10:50Speaker 3: So with the Carla character. I mean, this movie gives
- 1:10:53Speaker 3: us a very familiar storyline of teen girls being mean
- 1:11:00Speaker 3: and or competitive with each other. We've seen it a
- 1:11:04Speaker 3: million times in movies, and this extends not just to
- 1:11:07Speaker 3: teen girls but like adult women as well. It's a
- 1:11:10Speaker 3: very familiar narrative device. We've seen it a million times.
- 1:11:14Speaker 3: We've talked about it on the show a million times,
- 1:11:17Speaker 3: and as we've discussed, this trope doesn't come from nowhere,
- 1:11:22Speaker 3: Like teen girls and women can be cruel to each
- 1:11:25Speaker 3: other in real life, it's just a matter of like,
- 1:11:28Speaker 3: does the story recognize and contextualize why this happens, which
- 1:11:33Speaker 3: is that girls and women in our patriarchal society are
- 1:11:38Speaker 3: conditioned to think that they have to compete against each
- 1:11:40Speaker 3: other for the limited spots that girls and women are
- 1:11:45Speaker 3: allowed to occupy. This movie does not dive too deeply
- 1:11:51Speaker 3: into this, but I do think it does a decent
- 1:11:53Speaker 3: job examining that. Like carlas you know, the Megan Fox
- 1:11:59Speaker 3: character clearly feels deeply threatened by Lola and her talent
- 1:12:05Speaker 3: and her looks and her status. And when Lola doesn't
- 1:12:09Speaker 3: want to be friends with Carla, she turns on Lola
- 1:12:13Speaker 3: because Carla is a very insecure person.
- 1:12:17Speaker 4: YEA.
- 1:12:17Speaker 3: Insecurity is a very common experience for teens in general,
- 1:12:21Speaker 3: but especially teen girls who are taught that their value
- 1:12:25Speaker 3: comes from very specific things, especially how physically attractive they are,
- 1:12:30Speaker 3: how much like social status they have.
- 1:12:33Speaker 4: Things like that.
- 1:12:34Speaker 3: Lola is also insecure, which is I think why she
- 1:12:38Speaker 3: lies and embellishes a lot. Yeah, she's more concerned about
- 1:12:42Speaker 3: like seeming interesting. But they're both you know, like experiencing
- 1:12:46Speaker 3: similar emotions and situations. They just handle it differently. But again,
- 1:12:55Speaker 3: the movie isn't providing a lot of like heavy analysis
- 1:12:59Speaker 3: on these things, but it's presenting to them in a
- 1:13:02Speaker 3: way that feels authentic more or less to me at least,
- 1:13:08Speaker 3: which you know, not all movies do that. A lot
- 1:13:11Speaker 3: of them are just like, well, I'm a male screenwriter,
- 1:13:14Speaker 3: and I've seen teen girls be really mean to each
- 1:13:17Speaker 3: other and I don't know why, but I've seen there's a.
- 1:13:21Speaker 4: Guest, here's me just throwing shits along. Yeah, it does
- 1:13:24Speaker 4: feel like as goofy as it can be. It does
- 1:13:27Speaker 4: feel kind of like clear to me that women wrote
- 1:13:32Speaker 4: this movie or had a high creative hand in it,
- 1:13:36Speaker 4: because even at the end, I mean, it's like, again,
- 1:13:38Speaker 4: very movie, but the fact that like Lola makes a
- 1:13:42Speaker 4: gesture to Carla like pulls her out of the water fountain,
- 1:13:46Speaker 4: It's like, Okay, so this movie's like internal code is
- 1:13:50Speaker 4: not that women hate each other forever, because I feel
- 1:13:52Speaker 4: like if it was like a very general dude coded movie,
- 1:13:57Speaker 4: you know, Carlo would be tossed off a cliff whatever.
- 1:14:00Speaker 4: But this one is like, there's a road to reconciliation
- 1:14:03Speaker 4: for these characters and great for them whatever. I wanted
- 1:14:08Speaker 4: to quickly shut out the fact that this movie is
- 1:14:10Speaker 4: written and directed by women, both white women. We have
- 1:14:15Speaker 4: a director, Sarah Sugarman, who this is the only movie
- 1:14:19Speaker 4: of hers that I recognized, but she's got a whole career.
- 1:14:23Speaker 4: She was an actor and also a director. And then
- 1:14:25Speaker 4: Gail parent who is iconic to me. I really love her.
- 1:14:31Speaker 4: She started as a writer on the Carol Burnett Show
- 1:14:34Speaker 4: way back in the day, and then she co created
- 1:14:37Speaker 4: one of my favorite shows ever, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,
- 1:14:42Speaker 4: which I would recommend to anyone listening. It's like it
- 1:14:45Speaker 4: was a Norman Lear I think helmed show that came
- 1:14:49Speaker 4: out in the seventies that was a parody of soap operas,
- 1:14:54Speaker 4: basically a feminist soap opera parody about seventies housewives and
- 1:14:59Speaker 4: how they were treated and this sort of general quote
- 1:15:03Speaker 4: unquote housewife character who starts cheating on her loser husband,
- 1:15:06Speaker 4: amongst other things. It's the best. I love it. She's
- 1:15:10Speaker 4: a legend to me. And then when I found out
- 1:15:13Speaker 4: that the writer of this movie was into her sixties.
- 1:15:15Speaker 4: I'm like, yeah, I believe it.
- 1:15:17Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe that's why Miss Bli was so good.
- 1:15:20Speaker 3: Right. This movie is also adapted from a book of
- 1:15:25Speaker 3: I Think the Same Name, written by American novelist Diane Sheldon.
- 1:15:33Speaker 3: So yeah, the creative voices behind this story are for
- 1:15:37Speaker 3: the girls before girls by Girls, but it's also for
- 1:15:41Speaker 3: everyone who.
- 1:15:42Speaker 4: Wants to enjoy. So gil Parent also wrote on Golden Girls,
- 1:15:46Speaker 4: and she also wrote Cadet Kelly's Let's just continue to
- 1:15:51Speaker 4: give her her flowers.
- 1:15:53Speaker 1: We love her, My time for the lady, right, she's
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: the coolest. I also feel this is kind of separate.
- 1:16:00Speaker 1: Disney wanted to give Lindsay Lohan a music career real
- 1:16:03Speaker 1: bad because she has this song at the end of
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: Confession between John Queen. She also has a couple songs.
- 1:16:10Speaker 4: In Freaky Friday I'm Sick Oh yeah, and then the.
- 1:16:13Speaker 1: Same year it might be the next year Rumors is
- 1:16:16Speaker 1: her first single.
- 1:16:17Speaker 4: Well, honestly, I'm like noe. With all due respect to
- 1:16:21Speaker 4: Hilary Duff. If Hillary Duff had a music career, why
- 1:16:24Speaker 4: didn't Lindsay lovehand?
- 1:16:25Speaker 3: Good question?
- 1:16:26Speaker 4: And I kind of wonder if the way that she
- 1:16:29Speaker 4: was treated in the media, interfered with it because it's
- 1:16:31Speaker 4: like most Disney slash Nickelodeon music careers. It's mostly like
- 1:16:36Speaker 4: an extension of marketing that we love to this day.
- 1:16:41Speaker 4: Like there's a few exceptions to that, but we don't
- 1:16:44Speaker 4: need to get into it.
- 1:16:45Speaker 3: Can we talk about Carla's two mean girl friends. It'll
- 1:16:52Speaker 3: be a quick conversation because we don't really ever hear
- 1:16:57Speaker 3: them talk. But obviously Carla is like, you know, the
- 1:17:00Speaker 3: Queen Bee, She's the Regina George type. This character in
- 1:17:06Speaker 3: movies often has two friends who follow her around. They
- 1:17:12Speaker 3: barely speak. I feel like often one of them is
- 1:17:17Speaker 3: a white girl and one of them is a girl
- 1:17:19Speaker 3: of color. In this movie, the black girl who is
- 1:17:23Speaker 3: friends with Carla, I would say, is on screen less
- 1:17:27Speaker 3: than the white friend, because like she's not at the
- 1:17:30Speaker 3: after party Stu's after party toward the end, whereas the
- 1:17:35Speaker 3: white friend is, and I think she doesn't speak at all,
- 1:17:39Speaker 3: whereas the white friend has at least one line. I mean,
- 1:17:43Speaker 3: neither of them get any narrative significance here. But I
- 1:17:48Speaker 3: feel like the white girl is like favored a bit
- 1:17:51Speaker 3: more as far as like a few lines of dialogue
- 1:17:53Speaker 3: and more screen time, and it just got me thinking
- 1:17:57Speaker 3: about how like this type of like sidekick mean girl character,
- 1:18:03Speaker 3: like the different versions we've seen, I mean, in this
- 1:18:05Speaker 3: movie is obviously like they don't have characters, but speaking
- 1:18:10Speaker 3: of she's all that. There's a similar situation with the
- 1:18:14Speaker 3: Gabrielle Union character where she's like one of the mean
- 1:18:17Speaker 3: girl sidekicks. She's the black one and then the other
- 1:18:19Speaker 3: one is like the white girl. But unlike most of
- 1:18:22Speaker 3: those archetypal characters, she has a personality, she has dialogue,
- 1:18:27Speaker 3: and she even has an arc where she becomes friends
- 1:18:30Speaker 3: with the like female protagonist by the end of the movie.
- 1:18:35Speaker 3: So I was just like, well, that would have been
- 1:18:37Speaker 3: nice to see or would have been nice to see
- 1:18:39Speaker 3: you know, yeah, anyone in this movie who wasn't a
- 1:18:42Speaker 3: white person given any narrative significance, but yeah, oops, we
- 1:18:47Speaker 3: forgot to do that.
- 1:18:49Speaker 4: Yeah, And I feel like that is like so often
- 1:18:51Speaker 4: built into or like tacitly justified by a class, which
- 1:18:57Speaker 4: also does not make sense if you've ever been to
- 1:19:00Speaker 4: a middle class, upper middle class community, Like, they are
- 1:19:03Speaker 4: still predominantly white, but they're not entirely white the way
- 1:19:07Speaker 4: that these movies present them and Also it's like it's
- 1:19:10Speaker 4: a movie. It's fake. There's like Lindsay Lohan's dad fake
- 1:19:15Speaker 4: dying in a cartoon accident. You can diversify this boring
- 1:19:20Speaker 4: New Jersey suburb as much as you like.
- 1:19:23Speaker 3: Also, just quick mention of Lola's hunger strike where she's
- 1:19:29Speaker 3: like emulating Gandhi's hunger strike, but like the clothes she's wearing,
- 1:19:35Speaker 3: the music that's playing in this scene, it's all very
- 1:19:39Speaker 3: like her appropriating like vague Indian culture. Basically.
- 1:19:46Speaker 1: So there's this book that's like a classic book, said Artha,
- 1:19:50Speaker 1: which is I have a hard time with this band
- 1:19:52Speaker 1: because I keep wanting to call the band, said Artha.
- 1:19:54Speaker 1: But it's called Sir Arthur. But if I'm not mistaken,
- 1:19:58Speaker 1: and I very well could be, I think, said Artha,
- 1:20:01Speaker 1: the main character of the book goes on a hunger strike.
- 1:20:05Speaker 1: I could have made that up. But I was like,
- 1:20:07Speaker 1: I wonder if they know that they're making that. If
- 1:20:10Speaker 1: that is the case, I wonder if they if they're
- 1:20:13Speaker 1: doing that on purpose. Either way, it's wrong, but I'm
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: wondering what they were thinking when it would.
- 1:20:20Speaker 4: Be curious, like what the logic justification was so interesting? Okay,
- 1:20:24Speaker 4: it's like see where we don't read books and so
- 1:20:27Speaker 4: we wouldn't know this. This is really helpful.
- 1:20:30Speaker 1: I read it in high school. Who's to say what
- 1:20:32Speaker 1: actually happened in that book?
- 1:20:33Speaker 4: Brave?
- 1:20:35Speaker 3: I mean, the whole thing is clearly like she's dramatic,
- 1:20:39Speaker 3: She's a drama queen. She's gonna like go to the extreme,
- 1:20:43Speaker 3: which like could mean of what ends up being a
- 1:20:46Speaker 3: fake hunger strike because we find out that she's eating
- 1:20:49Speaker 3: like Domino's pizza the whole time. But if she's gonna
- 1:20:52Speaker 3: make this dramatic choice by going on a hunger strike,
- 1:20:55Speaker 3: she doesn't also need to appropriate another culture while she's
- 1:20:58Speaker 3: doing it. But I feel like that was one of
- 1:21:01Speaker 3: the few examples of like like a very dated, problematic
- 1:21:06Speaker 3: choice like that in this movie, because like two thousand
- 1:21:11Speaker 3: and four was the peak for a lot of these,
- 1:21:14Speaker 3: and you wouldn't see it as much in a Disney
- 1:21:17Speaker 3: movie or a movie targeted toward younger people, but like
- 1:21:20Speaker 3: this was also the peak of like, let's take homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism,
- 1:21:27Speaker 3: et cetera, and just like make that what every joke
- 1:21:31Speaker 3: in a movie derives from.
- 1:21:33Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so well. And I also liked that it's
- 1:21:36Speaker 4: a subtle theme in this movie, but just the concept
- 1:21:40Speaker 4: of names that just like, this is the name I
- 1:21:43Speaker 4: go by, and at the beginning of the movie, her
- 1:21:45Speaker 4: mom does not respect that. At the end of the movie,
- 1:21:47Speaker 4: her mom does respect that. And I appreciate that that
- 1:21:53Speaker 4: was like taken and I don't think that I mean,
- 1:21:58Speaker 4: I don't know, it doesn't seem like the movie it
- 1:22:00Speaker 4: was intending much more than just acceptance from a parent.
- 1:22:03Speaker 4: But that's a broad enough theme that it like that
- 1:22:05Speaker 4: works for everybody. Where at the beginning, her mom like
- 1:22:07Speaker 4: doesn't really take her daughter seriously enough to take that
- 1:22:12Speaker 4: at face value. It kind of weirdly reminded me of
- 1:22:15Speaker 4: Ladybird in that way where you see a very similar
- 1:22:19Speaker 4: sort of like my name is Ladybird, and then at
- 1:22:21Speaker 4: the beginning is like I refuse to acknowledge that, And
- 1:22:24Speaker 4: at the end there's motion there. And I think that
- 1:22:28Speaker 4: that is like a nice thing to see for parents
- 1:22:31Speaker 4: and for kids in a movie like that, because I'm
- 1:22:34Speaker 4: sure as many parents saw this movie as kids, whether
- 1:22:37Speaker 4: voluntarily or not.
- 1:22:40Speaker 3: Does anyone have anything else they would like to discuss
- 1:22:45Speaker 3: about the movie.
- 1:22:46Speaker 4: Why did the backup dancers have blue hair? That's the
- 1:22:50Speaker 4: last thing I have to say, Oh, in the play,
- 1:22:53Speaker 4: I thought.
- 1:22:53Speaker 1: It was something about pigmillion.
- 1:22:55Speaker 4: The understand because of like, why do they look like
- 1:23:01Speaker 4: the guy from Team Rocket in Pokemon?
- 1:23:05Speaker 3: And they all know, well, they're they're modernizing pigmillions and
- 1:23:09Speaker 3: modern equals blue hair hair.
- 1:23:14Speaker 4: It was wild. I guess, like, I don't need to know,
- 1:23:17Speaker 4: but I just would like to know how to The
- 1:23:20Speaker 4: thought was, I would like to no judgment.
- 1:23:22Speaker 3: No, Well, this movie does pass the Bechdel test a lot,
- 1:23:29Speaker 3: a lot, not when Lola is lying about her father dying,
- 1:23:34Speaker 3: because she's talking about a man they do also talk
- 1:23:37Speaker 3: about like Stu Wolf and Sam some but there's lots
- 1:23:42Speaker 3: of conversations about the play and clothes and stuff like
- 1:23:50Speaker 3: that between many combinations of characters. So yeah, heftily passing.
- 1:23:56Speaker 3: They say, but what about the most important magic in
- 1:24:01Speaker 3: the whole world? Oh my gosh, are you talking about
- 1:24:04Speaker 3: our famous nipple scale, in which we rate the movie
- 1:24:08Speaker 3: on a scale that no regrets on a scale of
- 1:24:14Speaker 3: zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through
- 1:24:19Speaker 3: an intersectional feminist lens. I will give this oof maybe three,
- 1:24:29Speaker 3: maybe two and a half. I think it's doing some
- 1:24:32Speaker 3: interesting things as far as relationships between teen girls go.
- 1:24:37Speaker 3: I think it's clear that the creative minds behind this
- 1:24:41Speaker 3: story were women, drawing from their experiences, possibly at the
- 1:24:47Speaker 3: very least have a better idea of what it is
- 1:24:49Speaker 3: to be a teen girl than the men who often
- 1:24:53Speaker 3: write these stories about like female characters being in competition
- 1:24:57Speaker 3: with each other and or being friends with each other,
- 1:25:00Speaker 3: because men also don't understand what female friendship looks like
- 1:25:03Speaker 3: a lot of the time. So I thought like the
- 1:25:06Speaker 3: nuances in those relationships were interesting, including the mother daughter relationship,
- 1:25:11Speaker 3: although that's not super focused on, but I enjoyed that relationship.
- 1:25:15Speaker 3: The two romantic interests are like, best case scenario annoying
- 1:25:22Speaker 3: and unnecessary. Worst case scenario predatory and disgusting. So that
- 1:25:29Speaker 3: takes several nippleage points off.
- 1:25:33Speaker 4: Yeah, reretitor, skip it.
- 1:25:35Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, not a diverse cast in anyway, lots of
- 1:25:40Speaker 3: straight CIS white people, So I guess it's going to
- 1:25:44Speaker 3: be like a split down the middle for me two
- 1:25:45Speaker 3: point five nipples. I will give all of them to the.
- 1:25:52Speaker 4: Dog, perfect, thank you. Yeah, I'll go the same, right
- 1:25:56Speaker 4: down the middle. I think that, hey, you're getting more
- 1:25:59Speaker 4: than you average early aughts teen girl movie in this movie,
- 1:26:04Speaker 4: but that doesn't mean that you're really seeing that much.
- 1:26:08Speaker 4: I appreciate the friendship dynamics that are a little more nuanced.
- 1:26:11Speaker 4: I think that you representation of women behind the camera
- 1:26:16Speaker 4: is very rare for most of these movies. And again, like,
- 1:26:20Speaker 4: this movie is helmed and stars white girls and women,
- 1:26:26Speaker 4: and there's clearly no effort or thought into anything but
- 1:26:32Speaker 4: upper class white girl experiences, which is this movie does
- 1:26:37Speaker 4: not move the needle in this genre at all, because
- 1:26:39Speaker 4: I mean, that's so teen movie, that's so dcom Like
- 1:26:42Speaker 4: so much teen girl media is entrenched in white girls
- 1:26:46Speaker 4: of this class specifically and the sort of problems slash
- 1:26:51Speaker 4: non problems that they have. But I do think you
- 1:26:54Speaker 4: can feel that this movie was written by people who
- 1:27:00Speaker 4: have some understanding of what teen girls grow through and
- 1:27:03Speaker 4: their friendships, the intensity of their friendships, the intensity of
- 1:27:06Speaker 4: like the things that they care about, whether it's rational
- 1:27:09Speaker 4: or not, in a way that didn't feel like even
- 1:27:11Speaker 4: when it was intense and dramatic, and like Lindsay Lohan
- 1:27:14Speaker 4: wearing a funeral dress to school when the band broke up,
- 1:27:18Speaker 4: which we should have given more attentions, I thought that
- 1:27:21Speaker 4: so good. That's one of the things I always remember
- 1:27:25Speaker 4: it's both really dramatic and goofy, but it's like not
- 1:27:29Speaker 4: making fun of her in a way that I feel
- 1:27:32Speaker 4: like that's a really hard balance to strike without having
- 1:27:37Speaker 4: lived that in some way yourself.
- 1:27:39Speaker 3: I thought I was going to be really annoyed by
- 1:27:42Speaker 3: like the movie in general, and especially by the drama
- 1:27:46Speaker 3: queen character, because like, I don't want to see someone
- 1:27:50Speaker 3: being like irrationally dramatic all the time, Like that's very
- 1:27:54Speaker 3: annoying to me. But Lindsay Lohan's playing it, so I'm like, oh, like, yes,
- 1:27:59Speaker 3: she's being dramatic about a lot of things, but in
- 1:28:02Speaker 3: a way that's like very funny, and her like monologues
- 1:28:06Speaker 3: about certain things are like extremely well written, and I'm like,
- 1:28:09Speaker 3: if did you just improvise that? Because that was poetry.
- 1:28:12Speaker 4: Gail parent Like, she's a really good writer. I really love.
- 1:28:15Speaker 4: Everyone should watch Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman. It's on whatever
- 1:28:19Speaker 4: that thing is that isn't YouTube daily Motion for some reason,
- 1:28:22Speaker 4: who knows why, But I highly recommend it. It's really
- 1:28:25Speaker 4: really good. So yeah, I'll split it down the middle
- 1:28:28Speaker 4: because all of the men are creepy and unnecessary, and
- 1:28:31Speaker 4: so I will give one to Gail parent. I will
- 1:28:35Speaker 4: give one to Lindsay Lohan and then I guess, oh,
- 1:28:40Speaker 4: I guess I'm gonna split the last quarter nipples. Pretty cruel.
- 1:28:42Speaker 4: But Alison Pill and Meghan Fox, I mean two icons
- 1:28:46Speaker 4: and I'm Carol Caine.
- 1:28:48Speaker 3: You see. Ah, I'll give one of mine to Carol
- 1:28:51Speaker 3: Kane and I'll get the dog one and a half.
- 1:28:54Speaker 1: Nice.
- 1:28:55Speaker 4: I can't believe you ranked Dog above Carol Kane. History
- 1:28:58Speaker 4: will remember that, Caitlin, that's just.
- 1:29:02Speaker 3: Me being dramatic.
- 1:29:05Speaker 4: So, Kraia, what do you think?
- 1:29:06Speaker 1: I agree? I was leaning two point five to three,
- 1:29:10Speaker 1: so I'll stay in that two point five range. I
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: really like that it makes teen girls. It makes it
- 1:29:17Speaker 1: clear that they are worthy of redemption, and just because
- 1:29:21Speaker 1: you do something bad once or a few times doesn't
- 1:29:23Speaker 1: mean that you are bad and that's who you are
- 1:29:26Speaker 1: as person. And I feel like a lot of the
- 1:29:28Speaker 1: time that's not the message that teen girls get in media.
- 1:29:31Speaker 1: So grateful for that. And then, of course the men
- 1:29:35Speaker 1: are unnecessary and creepy and weird and gross and disgusting,
- 1:29:39Speaker 1: and so that definitely deducts some points from there. I'm
- 1:29:44Speaker 1: going to give one full nipple to Megan Fox because
- 1:29:48Speaker 1: she as we talked about earlier has been mistreated because
- 1:29:52Speaker 1: of the way that she's been type cast. I will
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: give one to Lindsay Lohan because she's Lindsay Lohan and
- 1:29:57Speaker 1: she deserves and the half nipple can go to Carol Kine. Yea, yeah,
- 1:30:05Speaker 1: she's great, like actually fantastic. Considering moving it up to
- 1:30:09Speaker 1: three so she can have an entire nipple herself.
- 1:30:12Speaker 3: Whatever you want. Yeah, well, Seqoya, thank you so much
- 1:30:15Speaker 3: for joining us. This has been a treat, so much fun.
- 1:30:20Speaker 3: Where can people check out your social media? Check out
- 1:30:24Speaker 3: your podcast for sure?
- 1:30:25Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me first of all,
- 1:30:26Speaker 1: and thank you so much for indulging one of my
- 1:30:29Speaker 1: teen child's moments anytime. It was great. It was a
- 1:30:33Speaker 1: great refresh to watch it again. You can find me
- 1:30:35Speaker 1: across social media at Sequoia b Holmes. You can find
- 1:30:39Speaker 1: my podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, including YouTube, and
- 1:30:42Speaker 1: you can find it on social at BPLP.
- 1:30:44Speaker 3: Pod awesome amazing. You can check us out on a
- 1:30:49Speaker 3: guest Twitter and Instagram at Bechtel Cast. More importantly, subscribe
- 1:30:56Speaker 3: to our Matreon at patreon dot com slashpactel Cast, where
- 1:31:01Speaker 3: you get two bonus episodes every month, plus access to
- 1:31:04Speaker 3: the back catalog of like one hundred and fifty bonus episodes,
- 1:31:10Speaker 3: fun themes, lots of dcom's over there, lots of good
- 1:31:15Speaker 3: you wouldn't believe.
- 1:31:17Speaker 4: I mean, we also just this is not a decom movie,
- 1:31:19Speaker 4: but Decom code and we just did what a girl wants.
- 1:31:21Speaker 4: So you can hop on over there for that and more,
- 1:31:25Speaker 4: and you can get our merch at teapublic dot com
- 1:31:27Speaker 4: slash the Bechtyl Cast. And with that, does anyone want
- 1:31:34Speaker 4: to go end up with a really perfunctory, boring end
- 1:31:38Speaker 4: of movie boyfriend, because that's how this movie ends.
- 1:31:41Speaker 3: No, but I do want to star in Eliza Rocks
- 1:31:45Speaker 3: and ooh sing with blue haired people behind me.
- 1:31:48Speaker 4: I want to be one of the blue haired people.
- 1:31:50Speaker 4: I'm not aiming too high.
- 1:31:52Speaker 1: Nice.
- 1:31:53Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the part that you actually wanted all along.
- 1:31:55Speaker 3: That's the most interesting role.
- 1:31:57Speaker 4: Actually, I'm really getting into the story.
- 1:31:59Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, bye bye,