Movie Reviews: Custody/The Party Never Stops

In this post I will review two recent Lifetime Original Movies which I watched because they starred favorites of the TCR. Namely, Custody, starring Kay Panabaker and The Party Never Stops: Diary of a Binge Drinker starring Sara Paxton. Let's roll.

Custody

I think I've reviewed each of Kay Panabaker's projects to date except Life Is Ruff (actually have I really written anything about Debbie Berwick on here?), so it only makes sense to throw one together on this. (Please note that Life Is Ruff will never be reviewed on this blog. Know that it is terrible.)

(Brief) Plot Summary ('cause, actually I don't really totally remember what happened): Rob Morrow (from Numbers) plays a widowed English professor named David Gordon who has a daughter named Amanda (Kay Panabaker - Official Actress of the TCR). Amanda's mom died when she was extremely young, and so she never even really knew her. David and Amanda have a solid and steady group of (wacky!) friends, and their life is generally pleasant. This is all changed when a new man, John Sullivan (James Denton from Desperate Housewives) shows up claiming to be Amanda's real birth father. This fact is quickly confirmed by David. John decides he wants to get to know Amanda and, actually, sues for full time custody of Amanda and wins. The movie proceeds from there, and I don't wanna give away too much even though nothing that happens is too surprising.

Commentary: Well, this was a pretty cute movie, but there wasn't really very much to it. The group of wacky and witty and diverse friends was an unnecessary distraction and was really cliched. It was like watching a very low-rent version of a Richard Curtis movie. Kay Panabaker was cute and charming as always, and she does well with the dramatic parts of the movie. I've embarrassingly gushed over Kay and her talents many times before on this blog (just click the Kay Panabaker tag at the end of this post), so I'll avoid going too overboard this time. But she continues to have such a charming screen presence, and she continues to have pitch-perfect facial expressions, vocal inflections, etc. All the little things she does that always impress me so much. Suffice to say, I really liked her performance, even though there really wasn't too much to her character. The movie was cliched, the characters actions were cliched, the characters themselves were cliched, etc. etc.

I've spoken out against judging movies solely based on the originality of their plot many times before but, unfortunately, that seems to be a pretty valid criticism of this movie. It's not original, and it doesn't go about its unoriginality in a particularly interesting way. I'm as big a Kay Panabaker fan as you'll meet and I almost fell asleep partway through this.

But none of this is to say there isn't anything to enjoy in this movie beyond Kay. Kay's friend is a really fun character, and I liked the actress a lot. The ending, though expected, was also very satisfying and well done. The best part of the movie, all in all, was the relationship between Kay's character and Rob Morrow's character. This was a pretty real relationship, and it was well done. Most of the best moments in the movie are the quiet, personal moments shared by those two, and they lend a depth to the movie that would otherwise not be there.

Final Comments/Grade: Emotionally affecting, satisfying ending, one of my favorite actresses giving a great performance as lead, but yet incredibly uninteresting. Cute, but with no substance at all. I've given good grades to cute movies with little substance many times before (Raise Your Voice, Ella Enchanted), but I just can't in good conscience give a good grade to a movie that entertained me so little. Especially when the plot and characters and themes are as unoriginal as they are here. 5/10.

The Party Never Stops: Diary of a Binge Drinker

(Brief) Plot Summary ('cause, actually I don't really totally remember what happened): Jesse Tanner (Sara Paxton) is a goody-two-shoes who lives in a small town with her mother and younger sister, her father having died several years previous. Jesse is about to be the first person in her family to go to college and she's very excited, though she will miss her mom. She instantly becomes friends with her college roommate Shanna (Chelsea Hobbs), who is a big partier who is planning on joining a sorority. Jesse and Shanna get big into the partying scene, which causes various troubles in Jesse's life. In one particularly awesome plot point, she is filmed topless for a Girls Gone Wild type movie which is posted on the internet. The movie proceeds in like fashion, again, not wanting to give too much away.

Commentary: This movie was extremely repetitive and not a whole hell of a lot happened, which means it probably should have been really boring. The constant stream of "Jesse does something wrong/her life screws up/her mom gets mad and forbids her from partying any more/OK I'll party this one last time" gets really tiresome (that sequence takes place like 3 or 4 times). Even though the plot is repetitive and the message is totally after-school-special, I nonetheless found myself very entertained.

My first inclination is to attribute this to a "so bad it's good" type ethos, due to the hysterics, scaremongering, ridiculous plot devices, and general shoddiness of the film. In fact, the film seems to be poorly made. I guess, the most important part of why I enjoyed this movie was the performance of the leads, Sara Paxton and Chelsea Hobbs. They both did a great job, and their chemistry was a hoot. And I'll be damned, but the relationship gave the movie a real emotional core. The movie really got to me. It's becoming increasingly easy to emotionally manipulate me in a film, and almost any movie that is supposed to make you sad or happy will get me choked up. So I can't fairly use that as a criteria for judging a movie, but there it is.

Chelsea Hobbs, as a newcomer, provided the most emotionally affecting scenes and the biggest laughs. She wasn't a revelation or anything, and it definitely wasn't a great performance, but she didn't screw it up and sometimes that's enough, especially for a movie like this. Sara was her usual charming self, though she had a bad tendency to overact. This was probably the weakest performance I've ever seen from Sara.

Though I was entertained, the story was very poorly structured and cliched. The whole movie was crazily over the top, and the over-the-topness resulted in the message not really being put across. It's hard to take anything about this movie seriously, so if it's really trying to express the dangers of binge drinking it's a failure from that standpoint.

Final Comments: Opposite of Custody, this movie was not cute, and it was very poorly done. But Custody put me to sleep, this movie I couldn't turn away from. Both movies featured strong performances from the leads, though I was a bit disappointed by Sara. I generally tend to go with poorly made but entertaining over well made but boring. 6/10.

Movie Review: Sydney White

Before I do the review, first a minor procedural note. Question: What is the status of this blog? The quick answer is that I don't know. It's frustrating to spend significant time on writing for a blog when nobody reads or cares about it. I think that there are more productive and enjoyable ways to spend my free time. At this point, I may re-start writing regularly at some point, I may quit writing altogether, or I may go back to my old "one really long post a month" style. I know that I'm not a very good writer, and I'm becoming less and less convinced that my blog is providing a unique or interesting viewpoint, particularly with regards to music. If the blog does return full-time, expect there to be significant changes. But, I do generally enjoy writing the posts and re-reading them. So it will probably continue in some form, at least as a vanity project.

OK, now here's a review for Sydney White. A very overdue review of Nancy Drew should be forthcoming shortly.


The Movie: Sydney White
The Plot: Sydney White's (Amanda Bynes) mom died when she was young, leaving her to be raised by her plumber father. She spent her entire youth growing up on construction sites, acting manly, etc. But, when she finally gets into college (the same college her mom went to!), she is determined to join the same sorority her mom belonged to, the Kappas. Running the Kappas is queen of the school Rachel Witchburn. When Rachel prevents Sydney from joining the Kappa sorority, she ends up with a group of offensively stereotypical dorks, who live in a run-down dorm called "The Vortex". Each of these dorks is, "hilariously", an analogue to one of Snow White's seven dwarves (by process of elimination Samm Levine's character is an analogue to Happy, but the connection is extremely thin at best). She rallies the dorks together to take down Rachel Witchburn and the Greek system and get The Vortex a little respect. Also, she has a budding romantic relationship with Tyler Prince, the hottest guy on campus and ex-boyfriend of Rachel.

Commentary: Don't be fooled by the plot summary and the seeming feel of the movie, there are several important differences between this film and Revenge of the Nerds. For example:

• In Revenge of the Nerds, the characters live in a run down house, which they touchingly renovate half-way through the movie. In Sydney White the characters live in a run down house, which they touchingly renovate AT THE END of the movie.
  
• In ROTN, the main characters are fighting against the king of the school, a jock who is president of the biggest fraternity on campus and hates nerds. In Sydney White, the main characters are fighting against the QUEEN of the school, a GLAMOROUS AND GORGEOUS GIRLY GIRL who is president of the biggest SORORITY on campus and hates DORKS.
• In ROTN, the main character gives a touching speech at the end, where he proclaims how it's not that bad to be a nerd and gets everybody fired up. After the speech, people touchingly get up to proclaim how they are also nerds. Everybody except the evil jocks admits they are nerds and the jocks are defeated. In Sydney White, the main character gives a touching speech at the end, where SHE proclaims how it's not that bad to be a DORK and gets everybody fired up. After the speech, people touchingly get up to proclaim how they are also DORK. Everybody except RACHEL WITCHBURN admits they are nerds and RACHEL IS defeated.
  

OK, OK, I'll stop there, I think I've made my point. In a way, it's nice to have a throwback to the old 80's style of teen movie. There are ridiculously over-the-top nerds, and there are jocks who hate the nerds, and pretty girls who love the jocks. The problem is that this movie is just too indebted to those old movies, and content not to add anything new to the plot.

I mean, look, originality and unpredictability are far from all I look for in a movie. Sara Paxton does a great job as Rachel, in a role that's fairly dissimilar to everything else I've seen her play. I hope she continues to act in roles like these in the future. Amanda Bynes gives a good performance as always, she continues to be a real charmer. No, the performances were generally pretty good. And honestly, the unoriginality could be easily forgiven if the movie itself were more entertaining. But the movie has several other flaws: The geeks are all too over the top, and their shticks got extremely tiresome after a while. The love story/Tyler Prince aspect of the movie adds almost nothing, and probably hurts more than it helps.

And then there's the Snow White stuff. My contention is that this movie would be much better had they not tried to jam in Snow White references. Making the dorks all analogous to the dwarves is kind of cute, and I enjoyed watching that unfold. The character names, though, are groan-inducing. And, importantly, the Snow White stuff is jammed in and unnecessary, and ultimately hurts the flow of the movie. Instead of a magic mirror, Rachel checks Myspace to see who is the most popular girl on school. Once Sydney inevitably passes her to #1, she sends a computer virus to destroy her APPLE computer (Har de har har). Seeing them jam this crap into this movie almost made me cringe, and I really wish they had just played it straight, especially since the movie could/would have played essentially the same without jamming those explicit references in there.

On top of all of this, I had significant problems with the character of Sydney. She was just too damn perfect. There was seemingly nothing she couldn't do, and if she had started walking on water in the middle of the movie I would not have been surprised at all. A character has to be relateable to be likeable, and hard as Amanda tried and well as she acted, she just wasn't relateable at all. Let's see, very attractive, athletic, handy, loves sports, gives to charity, genuinely wants to be friends with dorks, totally unselfish, reads comic books, and just wants to connect with her mom. I mean, come on.

There's a kernel of a pretty good movie in here. The parts that directly involved Amanda Bynes and Sara Paxton's conflict were fun, and their interactions with each other were a hoot to watch. Unfortunately, it's the "everything else" part of the movie that drags it down.

Special notice should to to Crystal Hunt, who plays Dinky in the film. Dinky is a member of the Kappa fraternity, who is nonetheless friends with Sydney and a sympathetic character. I was extremely impressed by Crystal's work in this movie. She was SO cute, and her Southern accent was a hoot. So for cuteness, and real charm, and some good acting ability too, Crystal gets the official TCR seal of approval. I really look forward to seeing her in future work. This character was the only well done character in the film, other than Rachel, and I'm inclined to think that Crystal was a huge part of that.

Final Rating:
Amanda Bynes, Sara Paxton, and Crystal Hunt are excellent. The movie is pretty charming, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't reasonably entertained by it. That being said, this is not a movie I can recommend watching. The real problem is that it's just not a very good movie. 4/10.

28th Annual Young Artist Awards

Before I get into the 28th annual Young Artist Award nominations, let me take a second to revise my previous post. I said that I didn't know why I loved Antonella Barba, but actually it's pretty clear. She is (by far) the most attractive female finalist, she's got a really great soulful tone to her voice, she's confident without being cocky, and she comes off as genuinely likeable. It still seems like AI wanted me to hate her, but I think she's an almost lock for the top 12 (I'd say her, Gina, Melinda, and Jordin seem very likely to make the final 12 at this point). Doing a bit of research at lunch today I noted there is a strong correlation between Antonella fans and McPhee fans, which makes me feel better.

OK, the main thrust. The nominations for the 28th annual Young Artist Awards have been released, and here I will go through them, blow by blow, giving the offical TCR endorsed winner in each category. There's a shitload of categories, so strap in. Fun.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A FEATURE FILM/Leading Young Actor
Thomas Sangster - "Nanny McPhee"
Logan Lerman - "Hoot"
Connor Donovan - "Twelve and Holding"
Alex Neuberger - "Running Scared"
Cameron Bright - "Running Scared"
Josh Hutcherson - "RV"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Logan Lerman. He stars in the only of these movies I've seen, though he wasn't anything special. I've never even heard of 2 of em.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A FEATURE FILM/Leading Young Actress
Sara Paxton - "Aquamarine"
Dakota Fanning - "Charlotte's Web"
Brie Larson - "Hoot"
Keke Palmer - "Akeelah and the Bee"
Emily Rios - "Quinceanera"
Keisha Castle-Hughes - "Nativity Story"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Keke Palmer. My love for Sara Paxton and Brie Larson are well known by now but they aren't very good in these respective roles. Sorry Sara, take a walk. Keke, on the other hand, was great (and was good in Jump In too). Do they give speeches at these awards? If so, I'd lean towards supporting Brie just to hear her acceptance speech. For now I'll stick with Keke. Dakota is the reigning winner in this category (Dreamer).

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A FEATURE FILM/Supporting Young Actor
Cameron Bright - "X-Men: The Last Stand"
Tristan Lake Leabu - "Superman Returns"
Rory Culkin - "The Night Listener"
Connor Paolo - "World Trade Center"
Chase Ellison - "End of the Spear"
Troy Gentile - "Nacho Libre"
Josh Flitter - "Big Momma's House 2"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Cameron Bright. I only saw two of these movies, and I hated the little kid in Superman Returns. Leech is the choice here, despite his rather unchallenging role. At least he didn't screw anything up.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A FEATURE FILM/Supporting Young Actress
Zoe Weizenbaum - "Twelve and Holding"
Emma Roberts - "Aquamarine"
Joanna "Jojo" Levesque - "Aquamarine"
Hallie Kate Eisenberg - "How to Eat Fried Worms"
Hannah Marks - "Accepted"
Lucy Boynton - "Miss Potter"
Allison Stoner - "Step Up"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Emma Roberts. The movie sucked, and it wasn't her best performance, but she was still very good.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A FEATURE FILM/Young Actor Age Ten or Younger
Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick - "Omen"
Jimmy Bennett - "Firewall"
Noah Gray-Cabey - "Lady in the Water"
Jake Johnson - "Talladega Nights"
Nathan Gamble - "Babel"
Dylan Blue - "Deck the Halls"
Jake Cherry - "Night at the Museum"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Jake Cherry. Didn't see a single one of these films and haven't heard of a single one of these actors. Just picked at random. From now on I'll skip a category if I have no idea or no favorite.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A FEATURE FILM/Young Actress Age Ten or Younger
Tatum McCann - "Click"
Ryan Newman - "Zoom"
Chloe Grace Moretz - "Big Momma's House 2"
Elle Fanning - "Babel"
Sage Kermes - "Sweetland"
Abigail Breslin - "Little Miss Sunshine"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Abigail Breslin is the obvious choice here. Probably a slam dunk, as she is nominated for an Oscar (won't win, but still...).

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A FEATURE FILM/Young Ensemble Cast
"Nanny McPhee"
"How to Eat Fried Worms"
"Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause"
"Unaccompanied Minors"

TCR Endorsed Selection: "Unaccompanied Minors". An entertaining film.

[Skipping various international and short film categories, for hopefully obvious reasons.]

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV MOVIE, MINISERIES or SPECIAL (Comedy or Drama)/Leading Young Actor
Zac Efron - "High School Musical"
Jason Dolley - "Read It and Weep"
Matthew Knight - "Candles on Bay Street"
Micah Williams - "The Ron Clarke Story"
Brandon Smith - "The Ron Clarke Story"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Zac Efron. He was truly great as Troy Bolton, kid's got some real talent.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV MOVIE, MINISERIES or SPECIAL (Comedy or Drama)/Leading Young Actress
Vanessa Anne Hudgens - "High School Musical"
Sammi Hannatty - "Hello Sister, Goodbye Life"
Kay Panabaker - "Read It and Weep"
Maya Ritter - "Molly: American Girl on the Homefront"
Hannah Hodson - "The Ron Clarke Story"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Kay Panabaker. Hopefully by now this won't surprise anybody. As explained in an old post here, Sammi Hanratty's nomination is a big joke.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV MOVIE, MINISERIES or SPECIAL (Comedy or Drama)/Supporting Young Actor
Corbin Bleu - "High School Musical"
Beans El-Balaui - "Half Light"
Jake Smith - "For the Love of a Child"
Jonah Meyerson - "Griffin and Phoenix"
Andrew Chalmers - "Molly: American Girl on the Homefront"
Benjamin Petry - "The Lost Room"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Anybody but Corbin Bleu. Too hammy in that role, for my taste (he was good in Jump In). Lucas Grabeel was robbed (too old?).

[Skipping best supporting actress as I know nothing of any of the nominated films. Nobody from HSM was nominated. Presumably, Ashley Tisdale was already too old.]

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV SERIES (Comedy or Drama)/Leading Young Actor
Cole Sprouse - "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"
Tyler Williams - "Everybody Hates Chris"
Michael Seater - "Life With Derek"
Dylan Sprouse - "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"
Devon Werkheiser - "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide"
Kyle Massey - "That's So Raven"
Jamie Johnston - "Degrassi: The Next Generation"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Michael Seater. He was great on Strange Days at Blake Holsey High and is great on this show too, despite the fact that it's not that good. Kyle and Jamie would be fine choices as well. The Sprouses were nominated together last year, but separately this year. If they win, there is no God.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV SERIES (Comedy or Drama)/Leading Young Actress
Ashley Leggat - "Life With Derek"
Emma Roberts - "Unfabulous"
Jamie Lynn Spears - "Zoey 101"
Mikey Cyrus - "Hannah Montana"
Christa B. Allen - "Cake"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Emma Roberts. Once again, by now this will not surprise any reader of my blog. I think Emma's superb. Jamie Lynn and Miley being nominated is another hilarious joke. Ashley Leggat does very fine work on her show (and is a personal favorite). She wouldn't be a bad choice except that Emma totally outclasses her.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV SERIES (Comedy or Drama)Supporting Young Actor
Daniel Magder - "Life With Derek"
Andrew Chalmers - "Darcy's Wild Life"
Dan Curtiss Lee - "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide"
Paul Butcher - "Zoey 101"
Dean Collins - "The War at Home"
Alexander Gould - "Weeds"
Jesse Plemons - "Friday Night Lights"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Andrew Chalmers. I don't think I've talked about Darcy's much here, but I'm a big fan of the show. Sara Paxton's a big part of that, but the supporting cast is very talented as well.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV SERIES (Comedy or Drama)Supporting Young Actress
Miranda Cosgrove - "Drake and Josh"
Victoria Justice - "Zoey 101"
Emily Osment - "Hannah Montana"
Allie Grant - "Weeds"
Mackenzie Rosman - "7th Heaven"
Aimee Teegarden - "Friday Night Lights"
Hayden Panettiere - "Heroes"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Mackenzie Rosman. The best actor on the show, which I admittedly haven't seen in a couple years. Hayden's really improved over the course of the season, but not good enough. Emily Osment wouldn't be a bad choice either, I suppose, but she's a bit manic and shouty for my taste. And Hannah Montana winning an acting award would be so very wrong.

[Skipping Best Age 10 or under actor as the only ones I recognize are the Brino twins from Seventh Heaven and CJ Sanders from Heroes and I hate em both.]

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV SERIES (Comedy or Drama)/Young Actress Age Ten or Younger
Ariel Gade - "Invasion"
Ariel Waller - "Life With Derek"
Maria Lark - "Medium"
Billi Bruno - "According to Jim"
Conchita Campbell - "The 4400"
Emily Everhard - "Cake"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Oh, Conchita Campbell by a mile, she's really great. All due respect to the v. good Ariel Walker, but this is the biggest walk in any category yet.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV SERIES (Comedy or Drama)/Guest Starring Young Actress
Alyson Stoner - "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"
Emily Hirst - "Smallville"
Sammi Hanratty - "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"
Tay Blessey - "Cold Case"
Monet Monico - "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"
Chloe Grace Monetz - "Desparate Housewives"
Rachel Rogers - "Monk"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Was gonna skip this, but Chloe Grace Monetz deserves to win, she's a cutie pie. Had no idea (two time YAA nominated!) Sammi Hanratty was in Suite Life. Love Monk but Rachel had about 2 lines in this role.

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV SERIES (Comedy or Drama) Recurring Young Actor
Louis T. Noyle - "My Name Is Earl"
Noah Crawford - "My Name is Earl"
Masam Holden - "ER"
Daniel Goldman - "Dexter"
Jacob Kraemer - "Naturally Sadie"
Tyler Patrick Jones - "The Ghost Whisperer"
Cody Linley - "Hannah Montana"
Charley Stewart - "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"
Adam Langley - "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide"
Marc Donato - "Degrassi: The Next Generation"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Cody Linley. He's the best part of the show, when he's on. Way too many nominees in this category.

[Skipping recurring young actress as I have no feelings one way or another on any of the nominated ones. I've heard of a few of them, but none make an impression.]

BEST YOUNG ENSEMBLE PERFROMANCE IN A TV SERIES (Comedy or Drama)
"Unfabulous"
"Life With Derek"
"Darcy's Wild Life"
"Zoey 101"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Life With Derek. A very strong category, any of the choices would make me happy except Zoey 101 (actually the reigning winner). I was nearly tempted to pick Unfabulous, entirely based on Emma, but Derek has the much deeper cast overall. And it feels more like an ensemble, than Unfabulous, which is a one person show. Just because the writing sucks isn't their fault. Darcy's Wild Life, like Unfabulous, is too dependent on the excellent performance of its lead to deserve an award like this.

BEST FAMILY TELEVISION MOVIE or SPECIAL
"The Ron Clark Story"
"High School Musical"
"Hello Sister, Goodbye Life"
"Candles on Baystreet"
"Molly: An American Girl on the Homefront"
"For the Love of a Child"

TCR Endorsed Selection: High School Musical. Hello Sister, Goodbye Life being nominated over Read It and Weep is awful, but HSM would deserve to win anyways. Presumably it will win.

BEST FAMILY TELEVISION SERIES (Drama)
"Invasion"
"Saved"
"Flight 29 Down"
"7th Heaven"
"Brothers and Sisters"
"Ghost Whisperer"
"Friday Night Lights"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Flight 29 Down, though none of these shows are really any good. Ghost Whisperer stole Joan of Arcadia from me, and I will always hate it for that.

BEST FAMILY TELEVISION SERIES (Comedy)
"The Suite Life of Zack and Cody"
"Darcy's Wild Life"
"Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide"
"Unfabulous"
"Zoey 101"
"My Name is Earl"

TCR Endorsed Selection: Unfabulous. Interesting to me that Life With Derek wasn't nominated after all those cast nominations, but the writing is just so bad. Anyways Unfabulous an easy choice to me, though Darcy's Wild Life is good too. But just say no (justfanoe) to Zoey 101.

[The last four categories are all awards for best feature films in various ways, and since I saw so few movies I'm skipping them all. I do, however, support Akeelah and the Bee for best drama.]

Summerland

THE BACKGROUND: Summerland was a summer show that aired on the WB for two seasons in 2004 and 2005, comprising 26 episodes in total. The series stars Lori Loughlin, better known as Uncle Jesse's wife on Full House (character name Ava), as a fashion designer living in Playa Linda, California, who, upon the death of her sister and brother-in-law, is left in charge of their three children, who are relocated from Kansas to live with her. Ava raises the three kids together with her three adult roommates (two male and one female), and they go through various teen angst/adult angst issues. Zaniness ensues. Oh yeah, and it stars Kay Panabaker (the Official Actress of the TCR) as Nikki, the middle child. I've written a lot about Kay's other primary projects, so I figured it was time to share my thoughts on this one. Can a painfully extensive review of Life is Ruff be too far behind?

I've only seen the first season so all thoughts herein are confined to that season.

OVERVIEW/REVIEW: Summerland not only stars Kay, it also stars Jesse McCartney (as her older brother), features Zac Efron (as her boyfriend/friend) as a recurring character, and guest stars Sara Paxton (as Jesse's girlfriend) for about 5 or 6 episodes. This is a remarkably talented cast of teen stars. Zac Efron and Sara Paxton have always been good in all of the previous projects I have seen them in, and they are good here as well. Sara Paxton plays a "bad seed" girl, which is completely contrary to her other roles and overall image, but she does it convicingly. Jesse McCartney, I have to say I was surprised by. I've always disliked his music, and from what I've seen of his live performances, I've never found him to exude much charm there. However, he is a very good actor, and he handles the angst of the character really well. Even though all they ever really give him to do is surf and screw up relationships. But he deals with the angst and sadness of the role really well. As to Kay Panabaker, well, I of course love her work. Her facial expressions and vocal inflections are impeccable as always; she handles the drama well, and her essential charm still shines through. She handles the sadness of the character really well, especially at the beginning of the show when she's having trouble coping with the death of her parents. Her "apology" to Suzanne at the end of the pilot was probably my favorite moment of the entire first season. But she also handles the happiness too, the giddiness of young love, very well. Kay continues to impress me more and more with every new project I see her in. The adult stars on the show are generally adequate, but don't seem to be anything special to me.

Unfortunately good acting can't make an otherwise mediocre show a classic. Plotting is a big problem with this show. The plots are all extremely cliched and predictable, and the show overall doesn't seem to be adding anything new to the landscape of teen television. Let's take one plot for an example. Sara gives Bradin (Jesse McCartney) a marijuana cigarette, and he accepts it, not wanting to seem uncool; however, he never plans to actually smoke it. He puts it in the front pocket of his backpack and then doesn't zip it up. If you can predict the resolution of this storyline: congratulations, you too could be a screenwriter on Summerland. In addition, a lot of the dialogue seems stilted and unrealistic.

The relationship between Ava and Johnny is supposed to be the centerpiece of the show, but it shows no development at all over the course of the season. Ava and Johnny used to date, and they both still like each other but they are scared to take the next step and ask each other out on a date. So they have many conversations with their other friends, have many deep, introspective moments, etc. throughout the course of the season, while everybody knows (except them!) that they are meant to be together. There's only so long the audience can take this before getting bored with it, and the show really strains the limit of how far it can go.

Overall, I found the adult based storylines to be mostly fairly boring and wish they had dedicated more time to the kid storylines. I liked the Jesse McCartney love triangle, no matter how cliched it was (Bradin + Callie 4ever). Most of it is probably my Kay Panabaker love, but the Nikki storylines were my favorite part. I liked her interactions with Zac Efron a lot and her relationship with Amber seemed to be the only believable human relationship on the show, to me at least. But the adults seem to get even more face time than the kids. I realize that in a show with such a large cast it's very difficult to allocate the time evenly and properly between the characters, but I really wish less of the allocation had been to Ava and Johnny, and more had been to Nikki, Cameron, and Amber.

THE OFFICIAL OPINION OF THE TCR: A great cast, particularly a great teen cast, turn an otherwise mediocre show into a...well not good, but certainly watchable show. It's entertaining in the way that a drama is entertaining when you get to "know" the characters and who they are. Nothing special about it, I wouldn't be sad if I never saw another episode, and I'm not at all upset that it was cancelled, but it's certainly the type of show I could see myself being a regular viewer of if it had no other great shows in a competing time slot. 6/10.