Movie and Television Reviews

The girl-tween cup runneth over (tween boys are always well-served by Transformers-style blockbusters). Coming right after the excellent Nancy Drew, Bratz is another wonderful movie for girls between the ages of 8 and 12 as well as one of the best high school movies of recent years for people outside of that narrow demographic.

Those without young daughters may not be aware that Bratz are dolls made by MGM Entertainment that compete with Mattel's Barbie by being more hip and “urban” -Bratz are sort of the Beyonce to Barbie's Celine Dion.

And, producer Avi Arad does a wonderful job bringing those dolls to life in what could have been a hacky production.

Two, coequal plots dominate Bratz. The first deals with the issue of whether the girls, dubbed "Bratz" for maintaining a shred of dignity during a party in which they have to serve their peers, can stay friends despite their different interests; and the second involves crushing the desire of Meredith, a self-absorbed and controlling class queen who comes off as a combination of Paris Hilton and Hillary Clinton, to keep the school- and the bratz-separated by clique.

Sub-plots, involving everything from out-of-work moms, deafness and music appreciation (a great scene of a boy learning to listen to music through his hands), and parents’ impossibly high standards fill the crevices.

What results is a story four times more intricate than The Bourne Ultimatum with a message five times as deep, while at the same time being legitimately funny and light hearted in tone. Bratz provides two climaxes in the movie. The first one occurs when the Bratz embarrass the pompous Meredith at her second(!) Sweet Sixteen party and the second in an interesting twist on the “high school talent show” convention seen in movies like Napoleon Dynamite.

A particularly well-conceived scene is a phone montage which shows the Bratz slowly drifting apart after their freshman year.

The music and dance productions are better than most MTV videos and many will appreciate the fashion.

One of the movie’s strengths, however, may also be a turn-off for some movie-goers. Specifically, the movie is girly in the extreme, with lots of “oh-my-God”s “soooo”s, and “totally”s; as well as a large heaping of shopping and girlfriend bonding scenes. However, if you happen to be a tween girl or her nostalgic mom (Ironically, I don’t think high school girls, who often try to separate their current selves from their selves -5 years, will enjoy it as much; kids like to watch people about four or five years older), you’ll revel in the femininity of the whole thing (and which woman hasn’t met a Meredith?)

The actresses who play the Bratz are all very good, with Chelsea Staub as Meredith especially effective.

Politics/Message:

Perhaps because of the target age, Bratz is bereft of some of things common in high school movies of late. Specifically, Bratz doesn’t mention drugs or homosexuality (Mean Girls).

The movie sends the legitimately thoughtful message that people should both stay in cliques and mingle with those outside of it. So, the Bratz stay friends yet pursue their individual passions (Sasha is a cheerleader, Chloe is a jockette, Yazmin is a journalist and singer, and Janel is both a fashionista and brilliant scientist). Significantly, the girls are of different racial backgrounds. It’s not an issue in the movie, suggesting that..it’s not an issue.

The Bratz girls are both academic and extracurricular high achievers as well as very feminine. To the Bratz, the two are not contradictory. And femininity is something available to all girls. In one of a series of beautiful scenes in which the Bratz buck the strict clique-apartheid set by Meredith to teach their respective groups uncharacteristic skills, Sasha teaches her fellow jockettes how to walk in heels.

The movie also focuses on self-reliance. When Chloe's mom needs help preparing a meal, the girls decide to help her. When Cloe needs money for college, they don't petition the government to increase college funding, they give her a scholarship they acquire through their hard work and talent.

The movie holds marriage in esteem as Sasha doesn't give up hop that her parents get back together.

Finally, the movie stands for freedom. The Bratz shatter the top-down control exerted by busybody and high school social engineer, Meredith.

Those conservatives who criticize Bratz for promoting Hoochie-like behavior are really missing the point and wasting their energy on a battle already lost.

Not surprisingly, liberal movie reviewers hated the movie for the most part (here and here). In a typical moral inversion, one movie reviewer criticized the movie as "depraved". Others criticized it as being just for "fashion-crazed teens" not realizing that the fashion-crazed probably make up 90% of the teen girl population. Undoubtedly, this hostility stems not only from the reality that "fashionable teens" never paid attention to future geeky film critics, but from the fact that the Bratz are happy and don't wish to rebel. Some leftists shun movies with normal, content people ("how can they worry about fashion with George Bush as president?"). They'd have liked the movie more if the Bratz had left their chain-smoking, Southern Baptist parents for a drug-addicted life on the road with their ex-con lovers.