Wow that was terrible. Like, seriously it wasn't even a "bad movie". It was the kind of film I had to pause halfway to check my phone and then I dreaded pressing the play button. The reason why I finished the entire film was because I watched it in the car and traffic seemed like a worse option than watching this train wreck of a film. You know how in a movie, you can either a) be so totally immersed in the cinematic experience that you're lost in time b) be so totally immersed in the hotness of the character that you can't concentrate on the film c) be so totally appalled at both the technical aspects and the actors that you keep thinking, "this is crap." Yes, watching The Bling Ring was a c and sometimes a b because Emma Watson was stunning.
Let's get to it:
The movie was based and named after the true story of the Hollywood burglaries back in '08. Long story short, it's about high schooler Rebecca (Katie Chang) and new gay kid Marc (Israel Broussard) who decide to go to Paris Hilton's house for fun when she wasn't there. Paris left the key underneath the mat, that genius. So the two kids start their own adventures, robbing the houses of the rich and famous who seem to be oblivious to the existence of keys, house sitters, and burglar alarms. Soon, they invite their friends, Nicki (Emma Watson), Chloe (Claire Julien) and Sam (Taissa Farmiga) to join their crime. When Rebecca leaves to go live with her father in Nevada, her friends are arrested after an anonymous tipper. Rebecca, too, gets arrested. Rebecca and Marc are both sentenced to State Prison for 4 years and $800,000 in fine, and Nicki and Chloe are sentenced to 2 years in County Jail and $200,000. The film ends with Nicki doing an interview and making herself look like the victim and basically selling herself to the media.
Alright, I like Sofia Coppola, and I'm sure having a dad like Francis Coppola might be daunting, but this was not her best work. Lost In Translation, Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides were good, but man, I don't know what went wrong. Was she even on the set? Was she inebriated? Was the entire film a dare to make her worst film? Was it directed by a wooly mammoth? I really don't know. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but the words, "this film is shit," ran through my head every five minutes, and that is not an exaggeration.
Let's start with the characters. Not the actors, but characters. You see, I've read and watched their interviews. They seemed like deeply complicated people. Just a Wikipedia check on the kids would tell you that the real Marc (all names were changed) was taking medication for ADHD and had anxiety. Both Rebecca and Marc were kicked out of their previous high school, and upon graduating, Rebecca was awarded a creative arts scholarship. But Sofia seemed to think of these kids as shallow and vapid teenagers who like to rob. No underlying motifs were established in the film nor was there a history of the characters. Maybe they were said in passing, but nothing to make me feel connected somehow to the characters. They became flat and unrealistic. Sofia made no attempt to even humanize these teens.
The script was downright terrible, too. For a film put in the genre of a satirical black comedy crime film, The Bling Ring had as much laughable material as a Friedberg and Seltzer film. You could tell that Sofia had no empathy for these kids, and it seemed like research material for the characters were limited to Wikipedia, TMZ, and libelous tabloids. Please, if a villain from a hero film could gain the sympathy of the audience, you gotta do something with these characters. No matter how feeble us teenagers seem sometimes, we're so much more than that. Yes, we post pictures on Facebook and update the world about our escapades, but every teen has baggage too, and it was terrible not to see any of these kids and their baggage or strengths. If the real Rebecca had a creative arts scholarship, why wasn't it highlighted in the movie? To me, the characters were nothing more than that. Just characters. God, my Sims have more personality than them.
Now on to casting! Hold on tight, I have a lot to say about this. Katie Chang played Rebecca, and my first thought was, "wow she's gorgeous," followed by "wow she can't act for shit." Her acting wasn't just the average kind of terrible, but it was mind-numbingly terrible to the point where I was distracted by her inability to act. Her lines were delivered in a manner that resembled a dying parakeet. Her eyes were dead and her mouth would always be curled into a tight smile that looked sewed on. Even when she was happily robbing someone's house, she seemed bored. She lacked any kind of energy. What's weird is that she received numerous praise for her portrayal. Rolling Stone described her as 'mesmerizing', Chicago Tribune said she was a 'performer of serious promise' and many others I just don't want to write about right now. Sofia said she chose to cast a 'fresh face' because it's natural, unlike a lot of teen actors. That's alright, but don't choose a fresh face solely because of that trait alone. She was horrible was nowhere near believable as someone who would be the ringleader of a million-dollar crime.
Marc was similar. His lines sounded monotonous, and even when he was 'scared', he still retained those dead-set eyes. However, he wasn't as bad as Rebecca. Marc still looked like a pressured teenager who was thrown into this lifestyle. He was okay. Not spectacular and his poor acting skill was slightly distracting, but still believable nonetheless.
Nicki (Emma Watson) and Chloe (Claire Julien) were the saviors of this film. I thought Emma played such a fake Hollywood bimbo with a terrible American accent. But after watching more interviews with the real Alexis Neiers, I realized she was spot on. She sounded and acted exactly like Alexis, who seemed like she was educated by listening to Paris Hilton 24/7. So Emma earned my award for Awesome Performance, then followed by Chloe. She had a small role, but she has a deep husky voice that's impossible to miss in every scene. She was completely believable as a teenage girl. From the way she talked, acted, laughed, moved, breathed; she was the incarnation of every teenager. It's sad that she didn't get a bigger role or more lines. She was fantastic.
Finally, I'll talk about the cinematography and all that jazz none of you care about. I really don't want to because I would just say, "it's shit." But alas, I have to expand on these topics because this is what reviews are for. Both the directing and the editing were complete crap. I mean, has the editor never heard of the 30-degree rule? I think the only good shots were those of the interviews and the nightclub scenes. The entire film was a hit and miss, and if you think that this is just the way Sofia films because she's an 'auteur' or whatever, you're wrong. I've watched her previous films and I can safely say that she can do much better than this. The film looked like it was a project by a high school student at times. Or maybe I have an unhealthy proclivity towards shallow depth of field. *Shrugs*. Sue me. But if a movie feels like a movie, then I won't like it. I need to be 100% into it and and not worry about the shots or the jump cuts or the mise-en-scene. If I find myself snapping out of your film to point out technical flaws, then I won't enjoy it as much. Like how I thoroughly enjoyed Thor: The Dark World until the very last scene where the green screen at the back looked too much like a green screen. Seriously, I don't want to think about the CGI when I watching a film. It takes away from the whole feeling that I'm in Asgard.
All in all, I give the film 3.1/10. I loved loved loved the soundtrack and the sequencing and Nicki and Chloe, but that's about it. Literally. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
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