LOL, the (sort of) straight-to-DVD movie starring Miley Cyrus as a rebel teen and Demi Moore as her frustrated mom, has been sitting on my desk for a while.
I’ve been hearing about this movie for the past couple of years and kept thinking it’s one of two things. Either a fantastic small indie movie that couldn’t get funding to the big screen or a movie so horrible that everyone associated with it will want to strike from their IMDB page. Sadly, it’s the second one.
A little backstory: Lisa Azuelos wrote and directed the first incarnation of this movie, LOL (Laughing Out Loud), after realizing that teen movies were practically nonexistent in her home country of France. She often saw her daughter go to the theater to watch either American teen movies or horror movies. That version starred Christa Theret as teenager Lola and Sophie Marceau as her mom Anne.
What to say about the American version … the original film was billed as a comedy, but the American version is more drama. I feel like Miley Cyrus was hoping this movie would be a bridge to her grownup-movie career, but I don’t think it’s going to work that way.
I hate to say it, and I really do like Miley Cyrus (and don’t even mind her new hairdo), but she’s kind of a one-dimensional actress. You could pluck her out of most of her other movies and set her down in a different one, and she’d still be playing the same character. The emotions might vary a little, but not much.
LOL (@LOLMovieUS on Twitter) premiered in India on Feb. 10, 2012, and had a limited release in the U.S. on May 4, 2012. It never made it to Traverse City, and I’m guessing probably didn’t fare well in other cities around the country either. Despite a cast with some good creds — including Nora Dunn, Marlo Thomas, Ashley Greene and Thomas Jane — it’s just not a great movie. I do love the soundtrack, though, which features tunes by Keane, Rock Mafia and Foster the People.
Here’s Miley Cyrus in Rock Mafia’s video for The Big Bang (which I like way better than LOL, lol).
The story in LOL is centered on Cyrus’ character Lola — everyone calls her LOL — who breaks off with her boyfriend and is smitten with another boy who’s her best friend. They don’t want to goof up their friendship, though, so it takes most of the movie for them to decide whether they’re a couple or not.
Meanwhile, her mom has her own romantic issues. She starts off sleeping with her ex-husband (Thomas Jane), but then gets involved with a cop who gives a don’t-do-drugs talk at school. Things go to heck in a handbasket at various times throughout the movie, but by the end, everyone learns something important about friendship and family.
LOL is rated PG-13 for mature thematic content involving teen sexuality and drug and alcohol use, and for language. Teen sex is a major theme here, so I don’t really recommend it for, well, anyone really, but definitely not kids younger than 15.
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