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Mandy Gilbert (Ashley Tisdale) isn’t what anyone would call popular. Her controlling father (Kevin Pollak) doesn’t help her try to climb the social ladder, well, not until he gifts her contact lenses and the best video phone money can buy on her birthday. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though. Mandy now must use what I like to call “surveillance device” to trick her father into thinking she is at a friend’s house studying, when in reality, she is off to a huge party where her crush is waiting.
Every movie has its own essence to portray and this is no different, and is targeted to the teen/tween audiences. Plus, it was made for ABC FAMILY, so it is a made-for television movie. There is no question that Kevin Pollak is great in everything he acts in. Tisdale however is every bit the teen/tween star that is needed in this film. There was nothing wrong with the film, any sleepover would surprisingly have fun watching it. I would never begin to ‘critique’ a film that relies on such shallow humor does the same lighthearted approach does not sound entirely logical. I’m sure this film is a great teen comedy film.
The rest of the story that I will take issue with is their cover of SHADOWS OF THE NIGHT, popularized by Pat Benatar. Why should we endure horrendous covers over and over again? It is a mystery to me. There are certain songs rocked out by legends that are never supposed to be covered.
If you take the entire package into account, then the Blu Ray itself is a let down. The movie was released in 2008, so for the movies that I am more lenient for, I expected the picture quality to have had more effort put into it. The film is presented in 1.85:1n Widescreen, but the quality is less than sharp. The colors were great, though I was just wishing for more. Due to the fact that this was made for TV and not created to wow the viewers at home, the audio wasn’t great. The audio provided was simply okay. This film does not have any big explosions or action scenes, so the action is basic and there is not much to claim about it.
The Special Features is the most disappointing thing of all!
THE MAKING OF PICTURE THIS is just under 9 minutes long and can be pleasant to watch if you like the young stars, but other than that, it barely has any redeeming factors. Of course there are some interviews with the young cast, but what they should have done is let Kevin Pollak take over the entire thing because that would have made it more enjoyable!
CELL PHONE CONFESSIONS ARGH! This is just infuriating! The idea is that the cast members are supposed to “confess” things about their cast mates and the movie, though instead, they seem to spout off some nonsense which serves absolutely no purpose! There are no clever jokes in them and certainly no humor! Even the fact that you cannot play them all at once and have to select each one individually is annoying enough. And when they are all under a minute, it is simply irritating!
GR8 SCENE SPECIFIC TEXTING Two more of the young stars from the film, Shenae Grimes and Lauren Collins provide text commentary on some scenes in the movie.
For me personally, this makes no sense on multiple levels. First, I do not endorse a form of speaking with shorthand texts, so “Oblivious” as an option for text speak greatly annoyed me. First of all, cell phones have advanced greatly ever since this film was made. There’s no need to use abbreviations when most plans include unlimited texting and have a full keyboard. And those little messages known as pagers? Not a very glorious sight now, is it?
THE MAKING OF SHADOWS OF THE NIGHT NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! This one is very interesting as it features the girls singing the song during the recording prior to the actual filming in addition to them acting out the part where they completely destroy the song. For what reason? Who in their right minds would do something like that? There is no chance in the world that anyone involved in this movie thought, ‘Oh yeah, I really think this version of the song works!’ or ‘It is really good. Let’s showcase it in the special features’. All of this defies any rationale that I might come up with which completely boggles my mind.
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