April 25, 2006

Half-Assed 'American Dreamz,' That's Dreams With a 'Z'

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Sunday morning Cinecultist texted Lisa with the following (slightly cryptic) message:

Too rainy for kickball I think. Want to catch a movie later? New M Moore?

See, the T9 function on our cell phone didn't have the word "Mandy" in its memory but we figured Lisa would know what we meant. She did, calling us later with the news that it was playing at 7:30 pm in her neighborhood. What was exactly? Why American Dreamz, of course.

CC has a bit of a thing for Mandy Moore movies calling Chasing Liberty (which we also watched with Lis), "the best film of 2004" on January 13th of that year. On the scale of Mandy goodness we'd rank this one not as good as "the one where Mandy's the president's rebellious daughter" but definitely better than "the one where Mandy's the cancer stricken preacher's kid." Basically, she's the thinking person's pop star slash actress. She's cute but there's substance there too.

In the film she plays a Britney-esque pop star wannabe who gets on an American Idol type tv show where she competes against a sleeper cell terrorist who loves show tunes, in front of the President of the United States who's a guest judge on the program. This silly, very-of-the-moment satire is mildly diverting, though it probably isn't something that will be resonant beyond six months from now. But no matter. A little political and sociological fluff in the cineplex never hurt anyone and at least there's enough of a dialogue going on these days that projects like this can get bankrolled in the first place. If our administration had any say in it there'd be no discussion at all, let alone the goofy cinematic kind.

Posted by karen at April 25, 2006 10:26 PM