MinerWerks

What hath Disney wrought with The Princess Diaries?

There seems to be a load of teenage girl movies coming out and, most disturbingly, the teenage girls have a habit of tripping on everything.

Since I work in TV, I was subjected to a reel of spots for the upcoming What A Girl Wants, starring Amada Bynes and (wait for it) Colin Firth(?). One of the marketing hooks in these spots is that Ms. Bynes falls down. A lot. She falls over a wall, inciting this priceless line of dialogue:

“An impossibly large bird just fell off that wall.”

Ha ha. Do sixteen year olds know that bird is also British slang for a girl? Who wrote this and where do I send the analyst bills?

Bynes evidently trips over herself as a waitress and a fashion model, too. When was this kind of physical comedy deemed so hilarious? I haven’t found pain funny since Chris Columbus turned physical comedy into torture comedy with Nine Months.

Now, today, I went to see the Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature, Spirited Away. Obviously the usher that has the extra duty of building up film prints thinks Animation=Kids. Forget that kids are going to be bored twenty minutes into Spirited Away and then shit their pants after about an hour and a half when the creepy things start appearing. If you’ve seen any Anime, you know what I’m talking about.

The point is that I was subjected to a trailer for Disney’s Lizzy Maguire movie. Evidently this is a spin off of a successful cable TV show. I thought it was on Nickelodeon, but evidently it’s a Disney Channel production. I was almost – and I mean barely almost – interested in seeing this because Alex Borstein is in the trailer. And Alex Borstein is FUNNY. Curse you Alex for leaving MadTV!

So Lizzy Maguire is portrayed by Hilary Duff, who looked much older than her actual age on that poster for that Cody Banks secret agent movie starring the Malcolm in the Middle kid. Duff is even younger than Amanda Bynes, but she seems to have the same problem with tripping on everything. At least Amanda Bynes has some charisma for crissakes.

Is this some counter-programming to young girls to ignore portrayals of stable, able-footed women? Are they trying to say, “Hey, we know you’re clumsy, but you can still be a stereotypical teen girl who has no concept of the real world?” I mean, What a Girl Wants takes place in England, and Lizzy Maguire takes place in Rome. How many young girls get a chance to tour Europe sans parents before graduating high school? Bah!

At least the Olsen Twins took these kinds of movies straight to video, and I don’t recall THEM tripping over each other. The adults trip over everything in THEIR movies – as it should be!