GEEK CHARMING
Rating: TV-G
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
MSRP: $26.99 but Amazon has it for $16.99
Running Time: 98 minutes
What’s Going On?
Dylan Schoenfield is at the top of the social ladder at Woodlands Academy: pretty, popular, rich, and a legion of followers at her beck and call. Josh is a film nerd who would rather spend his time talking about remakes and directors than worrying about his outfit.
In order to win a film festival at school Josh decides to follow Dylan around and make a documentary on popularity and expose Dylan’s superficiality, though she sees it as an opportunity to cement the Blossom Queen crown. As time goes on, he learns that there’s more to her than her looks and her place on the social ladder, and after a rude awakening, Dylan and Josh must decide if they can see beyond their respective cliques to see each other for who they really are..
Who’s In It:
Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland (who plays Haley) and Matt Prokop star.
If You Like…:
Mean Girls, which this is essentially a sugar coated clone of, and are someone who has never seen Mean Girls – which you should remedy – you might want to see this.
Special Features:
While there are no special features related to the movie itself, there are ten episodes of the Disney Channel series Shake It Up, which is like American Dreams, only with more tweens and less social commentary. It’s kids joining a dancing show.
The Technical Gist
No complaints.
The Verdict
This pales in comparison to MEAN GIRLS, which traverses the same high school territory much more effectively, and has become the gold standard for the modern high school comedy. The characters here feel incredibly “written” and the dialogue is absurd and completely unnatural. While I’m not necessarily opposed to hyper intelligent and hyper verbal teens (ie MEAN GIRLS, SUPERBAD, EASY A), when you have teenagers throwing around non-existent lingo (“I thought we downloaded this already”) or putting on a French affectation for no apparent reason doesn’t make these teens seem cool, only that they’ve been written by adults who have no idea how teenagers speak or even how they should speak. The plot goes over the same territory as many other films of this ilk, all of which do it more effectively.
The characters in this film go to a midnight screening of FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR, a Disney great from the 80s, during the film. Do yourself a favor and watch that movie and SKIP GEEK CHARMING.
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