Crossroads

Crossroads; Drama, USA, 2002; D: Tamra Davis, S: Britney Spears, Zoë Saldaña, Taryn Manning, Anson Mount, Justin Long, Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall

Lucy, a teenage girl, finished all her exams in high school with flying colors, but she feels empty because she didn't have fun in her life. She refuses to have intercourse with her boyfriend because she wants to save her virginity for marriage while at the same time there are problems with her dad since she never met her mother. That's why she decides to take a trip to Los Angeles with her friends Kit and Mimi in a card riven by Ben. The ride isn't easy since Ben was in prison once, while Kit argues with a pregnant Mimi. Lucy finally meets her mother who rejects her again, while Mimi looses her child in a fall. Lucy falls in love with Ben and wins in a singing contest.

The first film featuring the starring role of singer Britney Spears isn't that terrible as many say it is. Actually, she is even sympathetic when she is nonchalantly dancing on her bed in her room in the exposition or when she giggles while she is performing a striptease in front of her boyfriend. Even the comedian Dan Aykroyd has a neat appearance as her father. Unfortunately, the film is simply too thin to show anything great: the story is a simple, gentle run-of-the-mill road movie where not much happens since 90 % of the time got wasted on inert driving with little character interactions. Only here and there do the three main girls display real feminine charms on the expense of shallow teenagers. Therefor, the movie was a modest success in the US. Many dramatic and emotional moments end up too contrived and poorly elaborated, like the short scene where Lucy's dad speaks about how her mother left her, but suddenly there's a hasty cut and the story nervously just moves on. Still, it's really not understandable why so many people hate "Crossroads": it's a clumsy, but solid film, and in the end Spears sings her nice song "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman".

Grade:+