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CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN

Josh Bell

It can't really be that hard to write one of these teen-girl movies. You don't need much plot or characterization, just a main character with a goal, some obstacles, and a love interest. Yet somehow, the creators of Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen can't get it right. Somehow the film gets through its entire running time without ever having a plot.


The main character, 15-year-old Lola Cep (Lindsay Lohan) doesn't grow or change. She's a drama queen at the start, a New Yorker whose mother (Glenne Headly) moves the family to New Jersey. Bohemian Lola doesn't fit in with the snobs at her new high school, but she bonds with Ella (Alison Pill) over their shared love of rock band Sidarthur.


Lola and Ella worship them, and want only to attend their farewell concert in New York. Meanwhile, Lola also is starring as Eliza Doolittle in a very bad version of Pygmalion.


That's pretty much the whole movie. Lola has a nemesis, popular Carla (Megan Fox), but there's no big showdown, just a brief subplot about Carla's efforts to discredit Lola. Even that's resolved in barely 10 minutes.


Although Lohan may not win her celebrity deathmatch with Hilary Duff, she gives a winning performance. Director Sara Sugarman adds cutesy fantasy sequences, but they only serve to point out how little is actually going on. Tween girls would do better to check out Lohan's last film, the funnier Freaky Friday. At least that one had a plot.

  • Get More Stories from Thu, Feb 26, 2004
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