by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
If I go to hell, Bratz is one of movies the Devil will be showing me as punishment for my sins.
On the IMdB website, someone has already started a thread entitled “This is why the terrorists hate us.” That statement is extreme, yes, but if the movie Bratz was an entirely accurate depiction of what this country was all about, I might actually consider a career in terrorism.
The main thing that bothered me about the flick was the blatant materialism, thinly disguised under catch-phrases like “BFFs forever!” I don’t mind materialism in a movie, as long as it isn’t masquerading as something else. It worked for me in Legally Blonde, as it did in Clueless and even Fight Club.
The four girls in the movie are depressingly similar, just like the dolls. The movie does its level best to highlight their stereotypically racial differences, by having a Mariachi band in Yasmin’s kitchen (she’s the Hispanic one), having Sasha’s parents divorced (she’s African-American), making Jade’s parents very proud of their super-smart daughter (she’s Asian), who they somehow have the need to dress up as a Catholic school girl, and Cloe, the white girl, comes from a poor single-parent family (white guilt).
It just proves that it’s okay to be soulless and shallow, as long as you have one friend of every ethnicity and group. This movie is so shallow that they really needed an extra girl to make up for it—maybe an Eskimo Girl, whose parents are trying to maintain an igloo in California. Since Yasmin’s deaf jock/DJ boyfriend really doesn’t quite cut the shallowness either--they should add an Indian Girl in a wheelchair.
Despite their disparate backgrounds and interests, these girls only really come alive when they’re shopping. There is an obligatory montage of shopping, almost cut off by the fact that Cloe – gasp – cannot afford to buy a new outfit. No one suggests that they all make their outfits using Jade’s mad fashion designing skillz, instead Sasha pulls out some “guilt” certificates she got from her divorced parents and gives them to Cloe.
During said montage, there comes a point when these supposedly15-16-year old girls are sitting at makeup counters at the mall. Within seconds they are being stalked by little girls in the age range that the line of dolls (and this movie) is actually aimed at (8-13-year olds). With a flourish, these unsupervised girls are suddenly in make-up chairs themselves, being made up by the Bratz girls. To me, this was the funniest part of the movie, because many parents refuse to buy the dolls on the grounds that it causes little girls to want to grow up too fast, wearing makeup and slutty clothes. Here the Bratz girls were, busily perpetuating the stereotype. If it was meant to be ironic, it certainly didn’t seem intentional.
Materialism runs rampant throughout the movie in ways that were especially irritating. I understand being into clothes and shoes but, damn, accessories should not be the center of the universe. The apparently “poor” Cloe actually seems as though she comes from a background that’s firmly middle class, not habscrabble poor. She and her mom live in a reasonably sized domicile, while everybody else in the movie tends to live in palatial estates. If kids look at Cloe’s house and standard of living as “poor” what kind of expectations are they going to have in life? I just picture this little army of 8-year old girls who can’t be happy without a constant infusion of material possessions.
I’m sure the filmmakers would say that I’m ignoring the bubblegum sweet life lessons they inserted in the film, between shoe-lust and shopping sprees, and I’d say they’re right. I am ignoring those life lessons. Those life lessons will not make me want to buy their doll and all their accessories. I recognize that the moral of the story is simply a marketing tool and not real morals. The real morals are in lines from the heroines like: “I have a passion for fashion—without that, I’m nothing.” It’s true. Strip away the surface stuff in the movie and you’ll find, well, nothing really.
I learned that shopping heals friendships within seconds, especially if your friend gives you gift certificates. I learned that it’s important to buy expensive shoes. Looking pretty is more important than anything. If you look good, you win. You can’t win while wearing a clown nose.
Now, the villain of this piece seems to really grasp that if you don’t look good, you can’t win. Her name is Meredith and she seems to be the evil, high-school version of the Elle Woods from Legally Blonde. Meredith works hard to keep the girls from ever shopping together again, by keeping them in segregated groups (nerds, Goths, cheerleaders).
If your kids are smart or even slightly perceptive, they will recognize that this movie is a formulaic mess, even if they can’t quite verbalize it. I can’t even verbalize some of it. I’m so traumatized by the extended music videos that it will be years before I can talk about it. Even for an 8-year old, it’s an insult to their intelligence. The audience I was in was made up mostly of groups of girls in the target age range, accompanied by an adult or two. They really weren’t laughing during the portions of the movie that were supposed to be funny, so I know that it wasn’t just my jaded adult sensibilities that clued me to the fact that this movie blows. It’s crap at any age.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
