New Girl. New School. New Rules.
Wild Child
By Serene Ho
Director: Nick Moore
Starring: Emma Roberts, Aidan Quinn, Natasha Richardson
Official website: http://www.wildchildmovie.com/
Teenage dramas are a predictable and nauseating lot. It overflows with too much sugary sweetness about friendships and first loves. The usual sub-plots typically revolve around a spoilt, rich, bratty, blonde girl turned good, coupled with an ending on how good always triumphs over evil. Not surprisingly, Wild Child delivers every morsel of these vital ingredients to the hilt.
The premise revolves around 16-year old Poppy Moore (Emma Roberts) who has been spoiled senseless by her rich father (Aidan Quinn). She is capable of pulling off any over the top antics without getting into much trouble. That is, until she decides to mess around with her father's new girlfriend's clothes.
Poppy's father, thereafter, decides that his daughter is getting out of control and needs to be disciplined to grow up to become a fine young woman. Hence, he sends her away from sunny Malibu to the land where it always rains - England. There at Abbey Mount boarding school, Poppy ends up in culture shock. It's not just the weather that she has to adjust to, but the strict ruling of the school as well. In addition, the girls there are world's apart from her friends back in Malibu, much to her disdain!
Misery racks her entire being at the beginning. Sensing her unhappiness, her roommates decide to help her along and hatch up a series of plans that to get Poppy expelled in super-speed. Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, the plan falls through and Poppy continues on in Abbey Mount realizing that she enjoys the company of these girls and no longer yearns to leave anymore. Of course, the fact that she has started falling in love with Freddie (the son of Abbey Mount's Headmistress) certainly doesn't hurt as well.
However, just when she has grows to like the people around her and settles into her new life, things start to go wrong. She faces the possibility of getting the expulsion that she had wished so hard for.
This is a tried and tested, formulaic plot that has been brought to the big screen many times before with mediocre success. Admittedly, the cast of Wild Child do bring some color and life to this flick but that alone is not enough to save the rickety thin storyline.
Wild Child is a movie that is best reserved for adolescents and teenagers. For while it is engaging in a few amusing scenarios here and there, ultimately, it was bland and as dull and dreary as the rain in England.
|
|||||
