The Transformers did it – they successfully made the leap from the toy store to the big screen. But unlike those dazzling, shape-shifting robots, the “Bratz” are actually less than meets the eye.
Yes, the four young women who play the living dolls are pretty and perky and they have enough energy to light up a decent-sized suburb. Girls – a very specific niche of girls ages 8-10 – will probably want to be them, even though the characters never resemble fully realized human beings.
And in these tabloidy times, they are much better role models than Britney/Lindsay/Paris/Nicole. While the girls are obsessed with fashion, they don’t dress like hoochie mamas like the Bratz dolls themselves. They go to class and they fight to stick by each other when high school cliques threaten to tear them apart, rendering them BFFs (best friends forever!) no more.
But wow, is this movie mind-numblingly vapid and shrill. In the hands of director Sean McNamara, who also did the painfully earnest Hilary Duff vehicle “Raise Your Voice,” it isn’t even a movie so much as an extended commercial for MTV and Skechers shoes and the L.A. outdoor shopping center The Grove, sort of the Las Vegas of malls.
That’s where Sasha (Logan Browning), Jade (Janel Parrish), Yasmin (Nathalia Ramos) and Cloe (Skyler Shaye) go for retail therapy when the pressure to fit in starts to get them down.
At first they’re super-psyched for their first day as freshman at Carry Nation High School – so much so, they bound out of bed with a smile and video conference each other to coordinate what they’re going to wear. It’s “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Wardrobe.”
But it doesn’t take long for their interests to pull this multicultural coterie in different directions. By junior year, our four plucky heroines don’t even speak to each other.
So you know there’s only one thing that can bring these girls back together: a talent show! They’ll show Meredith who’s boss by singing and dancing their way to social freedom. Walking through the cafeteria in four-inch heels while carrying a tray full of food isn’t their only talent, you know.
But it takes way too long to get there.
Logan Browning (left), Janel Parrish, Nathalia Ramos and Skyler Shaye star in “Bratz.”
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