Kids, Crossroads should be nominated for best comedy of the year. I should be hit for paying the nine bucks to see it.
Miss Spears’ first attempt at acting is just what it sets out to be, an attempt. With many scenes geared toward stretching those vocal chords, Britney seems to be giving an hour plus concert to moviegoers across the US. Crossroads combines a lucid, incoherent plot with bad wardrobe, bad singing, and many an “adult situation.” Basically, Britney is no longer a girl, she’s a woman.
The scene is set with a young Lucy (Spears), Mimi (Taryn Manning), and Kit (Zoe Saldana) burying a box with their hopes and dreams inside, that is to be dug up at midnight on graduation. Best friends at ten, enemies at eighteen, these girls come together, dig up the box, and decide to embark on a road trip to L.A.. There, a pregnant Mimi is set to audition for a record deal – why would a pregnant girl think that she could ever be, well, the next Britney Spears?
Lucy, the innocent, valedictorian, overachiever daughter of Louisiana mechanic Dan Aykroyd (who has just lost some of his credibility by picking up some fast cash), is running away to find her mother, played by Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrall, who abandoned her as a child. Surprise, surprise, her mother doesn’t want anything to do with her, but it provides the most laudable scene for Spears, she can actually cry on cue.
As predictable as an episode of the long-forgotten “Saved By the Bell,” the girls rekindle their long lost friendship, and this is when the “tough” issues come out: Britney being sexually assaulted, the issue of rape, and (oh no) Britney getting DRUNK! How taboo; she’s not that innocent. The teeny-boppers better bring a blindfold.
The “serial-killer” guitarist who they hitch a ride to L.A. with, Ben (Anson Mount), provided moments of “real” comedic relief. Think of a scruffy Ben Affleck doing stand-up comedy for ten year olds. He probably didn’t even get paid for the movie; he has some steamy scenes with the “princess of pop.” Some might say that there are just some things that money can’t buy. He has screen presence which will hopefully raise him out of the teen-genre abyss, as do Manning and Saldana, who have better voices than Spears. They will move on to bigger and better projects.
Basically, this is Miss Spears’ movie. (There were some nice shots of Herbal Essences and Pepsi.) She writes poetry (deep…) that is coincidentally a stanza to her new single, “Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” that Ben sets to music, she sings for him, and then she proceeds to audition with in L.A., where Aykroyd and judges go buck wild with excitement for this “voice.” (I never thought that anyone could make Madonna sound like Whitney Houston…) She doesn’t even lip sync correctly, but Lucy stays in L.A because she so poignantly asks, “Why don’t I just do something for myself for once?” Give me a break.
For all of you who want to see Spears prance in her underwear and get a nice view up her skirt, pay the nine dollars to see it. For those of you who want a good laugh, it’s worth the one hour and thirty-three minutes of your life that you lost sitting there with nine-year olds. You know when her fans are laughing, then it must be pretty bad.
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