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Film

First to snooze is winner

Sleepover is best left for its target young teen audience.

By PHILIP BOOTH
Published July 8, 2004

[Photo: MGM Pictures]

From left, Hannah (Mika Boorem), Julie (Alexa Vega), Yancy (Kallie Flynn Childress) Farrah (Scout Taylor-Compton), are friends with a mission in Sleepover. View a clip

Tweener girls need a silly summer movie of their own, right? Demand for such a niche product apparently drove the creation of a junior romantic comedy aimed at the teenybopper crowd. Have no fear, King Arthur, Spidey (and the rest): There's little possibility that Sleepover will appeal to anyone outside of the target audience, the same moviegoers who gravitated to last year's The Lizzie McGuire Movie and Freaky Friday.

Julie (Alexa Vega of the Spy Kids movies) has just graduated from junior high. Her summer projects include a) prepping herself for the demands of the new social order, b) saying goodbye to her best friend, Hannah (Mika Boorem), who's about to move out of state, and c) if possible, attracting the attention of older guy Steve (Sean Faris).

Sleepover, which owes a thing or two to the John Hughes school of '80s youth-culture movies but without the wit and spunk at its heart, is a tale of outsiders versus insiders. In this case, dark-headed Julie, blonde Hannah, chubby Yancy (Kallie Flynn Childress) and nondescript Farrah (Scout Taylor-Compton) are dubbed "pleathers" by their snobby counterparts, who share a sense of entitlement with the title characters in 1989's Heathers.

This movie's snobby rich girls, though, don't have murder, infidelity or much of anything else on their minds. They simply plan to beat the regular all-American gals in a scavenger hunt, the better to stake a place at the preferred lunchtime table in high school. The losers, in a fate apparently worse than being separated from their cell phones, will be consigned to a table near the trash cans.

The scavenger hunt (remember the ones in 1979's Scavenger Hunt and the 1936 comedy classic My Man Godfrey?) is an outgrowth of a sleepover at Julie's house. Her mom (Jane Lynch) is away, partying at a local dance club with a female friend, and her dad (Jeff Garlin of Curb Your Enthusiasm) is too busy installing a new water purifier to notice what's going on upstairs. Pretentious friend Stacie (Sara Paxton) proposes a showdown between her elitist friends and Julie's team.

Sleepover, to its credit, boasts a certain sweetness appropriate to its subject matter and intended audience - these girls are certainly far more innocent, and probably more like the typical young teen next door, than those portrayed in last year's Thirteen. Still, a few scenes are characterized by a certain sleaziness. Julie watches an older boy undress (off screen), and, at a nightclub, uses her curves to elicit the attention of a man who turns out to be the principal of her junior high; unbelievably, he agrees to have his picture taken with her.

A high-school prom is the setting for the climactic scenes in this by-the-numbers directorial debut of Joe Nussbaum, 31, responsible for George Lucas in Love, a widely lauded 1999 short parodying the early life of the Star Wars creator. That nine-minute film was a great start, but Sleepover is as far as Nussbaum got in five years?

Grade: C

Director: Joe Nussbaum

Cast: Alexa Vega, Mika Boorem, Scout Taylor-Compton, Kallie Flynn Childress, Sam Huntington, Jane Lynch, Jeff Garlin

Screenplay: Elisa Bell

Rating: PG

Running time: 89 min.

[Last modified July 7, 2004, 11:07:01]