'LOL' Film Review

‘LOL’ is a coming of age chick flick staring Miley Cyrus as Lola (also known as LOL to her friends.) It follows Lola and her friends in their quest to grow up and find love. Recently heartbroken, when her ex cheated on her, Lola begins to realize that her long time best friend Kyle, played by British actor Douglas Booth, might be the one for her. It shows us the complicated life of teens and the extent they go to in order to pretend they don’t care.

The writer Lisa Azuelos has adapted her 2008 French hit ‘LOL: Laughing out Loud’ for the American viewers and she has kept some of the traditional French features, for example, families openly bathing  in front of each other, adults smoking marijuana and a school trip to Paris. She has also added some more American factors for example texts and status updates pop up on the screen for the now more technical age.

Although sometimes over-acting in her tantrums Miley Cyrus brings her charm and likability to the role and acts out the complicated life well. However she does not have a lot to work with, the script shows teenagers to be sex obsessed and smoking pot constantly; It also shows teenagers to be obsessed with their own problems and although Anne, Lola’s mother (Demi Moore,) and her friends dinner parties give us a break from this, again they only seem to talk about their problems and their sexual wants.

Demi Moore plays a parent trying to be the perfect single mum while in a love triangle with the father of her children (her ex-husband) and Jeremy (Jean-Luc Bilodeau) a police man who gave her a lift home when her heel broke. Moore successfully sheds her usual ‘sexy look’ and becomes a tired looking woman and it is easy to believe that she is a single mum running around after three children.

The cast have believable chemistry especially Cyrus, Ashley Hinshaw ( Emily) and Lina Esco (Janice) they make you believe that they have been best friends for years they interact with each other like real best friends. Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus also have great chemistry and because of their great acting it is easy to believe that they have a complicated mother-daughter relationship. Adam G. Savani is also part of the cast and he plays the loser Wren wanting to have some fun with Emily, he brings a comedic aspect to the plot.

Over all I think LOL is a good film and one that should be watched, it has an amazing cast with buckets of talent.

Please follow me on twitter @elliekay96

Ellie Kay

Fun Size Film Review

Fun Size is the newest film that is sure to be watched by tweens all across the country. It follows the life of Cleveland High School student Wren (played by Nickelodeon star Victoria Justice) and her best friend April (played by Suburgatory star Jane Levy) as they set out for the best Halloween night of their life, however it soon turns out to be the worst.  Wren’s Halloween plans go a-wall as she is forced to look after her little brother, Albert (played by newcomer Jackson Nicoll,) instead of going to “the hottest guy in school” Halloween party and just when Wren thought it couldn’t get any worse she loses Albert and has to find him before her mum finds out she ever lost him.

Directed by Josh Schwartz it plays out the classic story of a girl who thinks she likes the hot boy but ends up liking the nerd. It is hard to understand why Albert helps the convenience store manager get revenge on his ex-girlfriend and I do not think the script shows Justice’s and Levy’s well known comic skills to the best of their ability. The script is badly written as there is nothing to suggest a relationship going on between Wren and, the ‘hottie’ Aaron Riley (Thomas McDonnell.) It is not clear who this film is aimed as for this film Nickelodeon has left its family friendly PG rating and has made it a 12A, they have hired tween stars such as Victoria Justice but then placed her alongside Chelsea Handler, who is probably unknown to anyone under the age of 18. It contains Fart Jokes and sex references, however its jokes always seem to fall flat, although the randomness of the script did mean it never became boring and the one-liners kept the audience on their toes. From watching the trailer we get the idea that the main plot of the story is Wren and April trying to find Albert, however a big part of the plot goes  to Wrens, recently widowed, mum and her love life; which is barely mentioned in the trailer. The search for Albert always seems to be more important when there is a lull in the teen romance area.

As usual in the tween comedies Wren does not get help from the hottie who she thinks she likes she gets it from two nerds, Roosevelt (Thomas Mann) and Peng (Osric Chau.) As with all tween comedies this film involves funny one-liners, nervous first kisses and a message that social hierarchy doesn’t matter, however anyone in secondary school will tell you this is not true.

Director, Josh Schwartz (OC and Gossip Girls) doesn’t tell the typical Halloween horror story but instead just retells every other tween film that has already been made, and he fails to repeat the winning formula that has been performed so well with his TV shows.

Justice is pleasing to the eye and charming on screen; however she occasionally tends to over act which is common for actors transferring from child stardom to more adult films. Levy plays the social climber character perfectly and seems to help carry the film naturally. Mann seems to portray a slightly more masculine nerd and Chau seems to play a nerd as if he were a natural.

Please follow me on twitter @elliekay96

Ellie Kay

'Jacks Gap' YouTube channel Review

‘Jacks Gap, Jacks Gap, five minutes of your life that you won’t get back!’ This is certainly true, and like Jack himself says in his first video- “Who would want to listen to five minutes of me?” Well somehow millions of people do, and I can proudly admit that I, myself, am one of those millions of people who log in every week to see if he has uploaded a new video yet. So, who is Jack? Well Jack is Jack Harries, you may have seen him in School of Comedy when he was younger, and in his early videos he films every week of his gap year; however, in his later videos it soon becomes him in front of his camera making the millions of viewers laugh in hysterics.

What’s that I hear you ask? Why does he have so many subscribers? Jack is just a naturally funny guy and when he invites other YouTubers onto his channel it becomes twice as hilarious. In his videos he seems to do the activities all of us wish we could do but for some reason we know it would never work for us, he goes street surfing and even makes the most boring of tasks (like opening mail) hilarious. When you combine this with his amazingly good looks it is hard to resist staring at him instead of doing your homework, and then when you think it can’t get much better he brings his TWIN BROTHER along and anybody who understands girls knows we can’t resist good looking twins. He even manages to make us cry sometimes (he has to say goodbye to his pet lizard.)

Jack has a twitter following of nearly three hundred thousand and is constantly updating his followers with what he is doing that moment in time and I have no doubt that each picture and tweet gets thousands of re-tweets. Although Jack has now gone off to study acting at Bristol, and I’m sure they’ve had an increase of girl applicants this year, he is still posting videos.  It is not just his good looks and charming wit that attracts YouTubers to his channel it is his knack for making each video different, nothing he does is the same and nothing he does is ordinary. So I recommend everyone to go onto youtube and check jacksgap out!

Please can everyone go and follow me on twitter @elliekay96 you can see every time I post a new review I would really appreciate it!

Ellie X