Mean Girls vs. Mean Girls 2

Mean Girls is a very well put together movie. Granted it's not entirely appropriate the whole way through... But it's a good movie.

You have your innocent protagonist who gets caught up in the popularity contest of high school and we come to find out she is a lot more flawed than we originally suspected.

You have your gay best friend and the outcast best friend who desperately want to take down the Plastics for mysterious reasons you only find out about towards the end.

You have your hot guy who the protagonist is chasing throughout the course of the film.

You have your three evil popular girls who will do whatever it takes to stay popular. Within this group, you have...

1. The leader 
2. The right hand/gossip
3. The idiot who goes along with whatever the leader comes up with

Now, this is a pretty basic formula for high school movies. Check them out, nearly every high school movie you see has an evil popular girl/guy/group, a main character with a couple of outcasts for best friends, and a hot guy/girl for the main character to chase.

This particular movie is unique because the protagonist goes from being an innocent home school kid to an unsuspecting high school kid and then is convinced that posing as one of the evil popular girls will give her lots of gossip to share with her new outcast friends.

I'll not tell you much more about how this goes, but suffice it to say that this is a very well done movie. The characters are flawed, the popular girls are evil but subtle, people react to the situations they get themselves into in very realistic ways, the comedy is hilarious but again, subtle, and it is just very well done.

Note: While it's true that Lindsay Lohan plays our darling innocent protagonist, keep in mind that this is before her life took a nosedive. She is the same sweet redhead you remember from The Parent Trap and Freaky Friday. I think this movie was finished just before she dyed her hair blonde and started turning into a drunk druggie.

A couple other characters you may recognize... Tina Fey plays the math teacher. Rachel McAdams plays the leader of the popular girls. Yes... Your favorite amnesiac from The Vow plays an absolutely terrible person. And Amanda Seyfried plays our lovable idiot.

For some reason, this movie just works. The chemistry between the characters is great, and that is why I was wary of watching the direct-to-TV sequel. Mean Girls 2. Why make a sequel? There weren't really any loose ends. Worse! Why make a sequel that has only one character carried over into it, that being the principal. Honestly, this sequel is like a Disney-fied wannabe version. When I saw it, I kept thinking of High School Musical, except something occurred to me. Sharpay was a better villain than this new evil girl. How does that happen? No, forget Disney-fied wannabe version, it was a wannabe of a Disney-fied wannabe version. That's how much they messed this thing up!

Let's start with our time frame. While the first film showcased an entire year, thereby giving our main character plenty of time to develop her character and infiltrate the popular girls, the second film did not take an entire year. Instead, it seems to have only taken a few weeks or a month at most. Not nearly enough time for all the required character development and certainly not enough time to turn the entire school's social structure upside down.

Next, we have our protagonist. Cady (LiLo) was believable in what she did. As an impressionable home school student with no real high school experience, it's easy to believe that she might get caught up in the whirlwind of the popular girls. Our protagonist from the sequel was supposedly a road worn, toughened girl who -after going through sixteen different schools- knew how to behave herself and wasn't about to get caught up in the drama. Or so she narrated. She is inconsistent at best, completely annoying at worst and it is very difficult to relate to her.

Now for our mean girls. In both films they are called the Plastics, but in the first film they are done well. They are subtle. There is no way anything they do wrong can really be traced back to them - they just don't leave much proof. People know they're evil, but they're also beautiful, they dress revealingly and... Well, it's easy to see why they never lack boyfriends. They are popular, the kind of girls who will smile and wave prettily from afar while whispering to each other about what a loser you are.

Allow me to explain something to you about the differences between mean boys and mean girls...
Mean boys will get physical. They'll physically fight and when they're done, they might still hate each other, or they might end up being friends. Who knows? Mean girls will be mentally abusive. They'll talk behind your back, start rumors, and prey on insecurities, causing forms of low self esteem that span lifetimes. In many ways, this is a much dirtier way to fight than the way boys do.

The Plastics in the sequel are not nearly so subtle. They resort to pulling pranks. Harmful pranks, yes, but they are so easily traceable. Unless someone has a tape recorder, there is no proof that the original Plastics did/said whatever it is they did/said. All these new Plastics need to rat them out for their stupidity is a video camera. And everyone has video cameras nowadays. Also, their style is ridiculously preppy with floral patterns and hair bows. If the originals were Barbie dolls, the new ones are American Girl dolls. This makes the out-of-place make out scenes even more ill-fitting. I felt like even though they were all teenagers, I was watching middle school kids make out, which quite frankly, I never ever needed to see.

Those are my main problems in comparing these movies. You also have the stupid stuff, like the shop teacher informing everyone that they'll need a 4.5 GPA to even be considered for this super fancy scholarship (the highest GPA you can get is 4.0...), the richest girl in school being terrorized for no apparent reason except the second richest doesn't like her, and the principal, who maintained an air of authority in the first film, was degraded to be a goofball in the second. Also, you have the basic Disney-channel movie formula wherein there's a contest and the main character either throws it or comes in second but is okay with it just to prove that winning isn't that important anyway.

There's also the apparent lack of a story arc in the sequel. In the first, you have the basic story arc wherein you are introduced to the characters, the main character goes through several crises, before everything comes to a climax and then calms down. In the second, you have the introduction and... Nothing. I suppose the football game was supposed to be the climax, but it didn't seem that climactic.

If you want to watch both these films, watch the second one first. Why? Because you should have something to look forward to in the first. Also... while the second one is probably only rated PG-13 because they said the B-word a couple of times, the first one is rated PG-13 for good reason. I personally wouldn 't put this movie on for anyone under the age of fifteen or sixteen... But that's just me. My advice is to completely skip the second movie, it's irrelevant to the first and doesn't add anything at all.

These movies are not owned by me.

-Kj

Crazy by Han Nolan

Crazy is a story about a guy who is scared to death that he'll end up insane like his dad.

His dad doesn't work, but can be found pulling his own teeth, attempting to listen to the radio while fully clothed in the bathtub, or running around with an ancient roman helmet on his head and tinfoil on his ears to keep out the Furie's voices.

The Furies, by the way, are Medusa and her two sisters. All three have snakes for hair and can turn a man to stone with a glance.

Every time the boy, whose name is Jason (for Jason and the Argonauts) comes home, he gets asked "Apollo! Any news from the front?" His middle name, by the way, is Apollo.

Did I mention the dad is Greek?

When he was six, his dad buried him alive so the Furies wouldn't get him. He was saved by his mother, but he still gets nightmares, especially since his mother had a stroke and passed away. She was a wedding and nature photographer, and the one who brought most of the money into the house. His father's few books on Greece didn't make much money.

Nowadays, he and his father live in an old house that's always cold because the heating is too expensive. There is almost no furniture, because Jason had to sell it all in order to buy food, which there is very little of at this point. He is a growing teenager and the only real food he gets is from the school lunch program.

He's trying his hardest to take care of his father and keep him out of the mental hospital, while at the same time battling his own mental issues. He has no friends, and trusts no one due to an incident in the fifth grade. Instead of friends, he has an audience and laugh track in his head. Yes, you read that right, an audience and a laugh track. Oh, and you're in there too. The audience is more or less his conscience, his confidence, his insanity, and his common sense, but he named them.

Rather than blend in like he wants to, he keeps acting up in school, getting the teacher's attention. Not in any mean way, he just does stupid stuff, like mess up the dates on all his papers and call Captain Ahab "Cap'n Ahab" when he was writing about Moby Dick.

He got warning after warning and finally his grades dropped and he started flunking everything, and now he's being sent to the school psychologist because the dates he's picking are the same dates as those when his mother got the stroke and died.

Things are not looking up in Jason's point of view. All he wants is to be left alone with his audience and take care of his dad, but now he's expected to share secrets with a group of other kids with family problems.

Overall, it's a good coming of age story, but if I give away any more, you'll have no reason to read it!

 Crazy doesn't belong to me, I'm not Han Nolan, nor am I crazy myself.

-Kj

Crossing the Tracks by Barbara Stuber

Crossing the Tracks is a story about a girl named Iris whose father doesn't seem to care about her anymore. He owns a shoe shop, so he cares a great deal about footwear and having the right pair of shoes for every occasion, and he's dating a woman Iris can't stand, but he doesn't seem to notice Iris other than her getting in the way.

One day, she finds out that he's sending her off to live with a doctor and his mother, neither of whom she had met before, and be a caretaker for the doctor's mother. She boards the train with the perfect shoes for the occasion, stiff as they may be, and exits the train barefoot.

Over the summer, she learns a great deal about herself and the people around her. She helps a girl she can't stand, and gains a new interest in an old friend.

It's a good story, and as it is focused around a doctor's household, there are some of the most hilarious remedies for ailments I've ever heard of.

The story is sad at times, but not a downer. There is love, but it is not strictly a romance. Happiness, but not clownish. Overall, it's a great mix, with good storytelling and fantastic characters. I'm looking forward to reading more from this author.

I'm not Barbara Stuber, nor did I write the book for her.

-Kj

"Trust in Me" Selena Gomez

Hey, have you ever seen Disney's movie The Jungle Book?

Well, long story short, it's about a kid named Mowgli who is literally raised by wolves in a jungle in India. There are tons of predators everywhere; Shere Kahn the tiger, King Louis of the orangutans and monkeys, various creepy crawlies and Shere Kahn's right hand man, Kaa the snake.

Kaa is a constrictor, so he doesn't use venom or anything like that, he simply squeezes the life out of his lunch. Mowgli looks like a good sized lunch. He hypnotizes Mowgli by singing "Trust in Me" and the kid is about to become his lunch.

How does it end? Well, it's a Disney movie, so that should give you a pretty good hint, but you can go ahead and watch it if you're curious. But that's not why I'm posting this.

Selena Gomez does a fantastically creepy cover of "Trust in Me" and if you're interested in hearing one of Hollywood's cute little sweethearts singing something not so cute or sweetheartish, you should check it out.

It's on Grooveshark, so you can look it up for free. I haven't searched for it on Youtube though, so there might be a video, in which case it could either hype up the creepy or tame it out a bit.

Anywho, I'm not Selena Gomez, and Disney owns the song!

-Kj

Legacy by Thomas E. Sniegoski

Hey guys, I've been up to my neck in summer reading and I have some highlights for you.

The first book in my pile is called Legacy and it's by a guy named Thomas E. Sniegoski. This is a story about a regular guy named Lucas, just living his life as a mechanic at this tiny little shop in the middle of nowhere. He's eighteen, dropped out of high school, lives with his mom, and doesn't really have much of a future outside the auto shop.

One day, he gets paid a visit by some guys from his old school. The leader is mad because Lucas made a comment about his girlfriend, so they get in a fight. Lucas is winning when he gets stabbed in the gut by the angry leader. The other guys run away while Lucas sinks to the floor. He pulls out the knife and he's pretty sure he's going to die when his boss comes in and sees the giant blood stain on his shirt. The boss gets kinda freaked out, but Lucas is feeling better. He lifted his shirt and... nothing. No gaping hole where his guts should have been, no ache, not even a scratch. But suddenly he's famished, so he heads across the street to the diner where his mom works and gets lunch.

A day or two later, an old man with a brand new Mustang pulls into the auto shop. There's nothing wrong with the car, the man just wanted to talk with Lucas. He has news. The man is really the Raptor, the superhero in charge of protecting Seraph City, and Lucas is his son.

Check it out, it's a good, fast read, but not totally mind candy. I had fun with it.

By the way... My name isn't Sniegoski, this is not my book, I'm just the reviewer.

-Kj

Five Flavors of Dumb

Hey, I recently read a new book titled Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John.

It's about a deaf girl who goes to school to find that a band is playing on the front step. They're playing so loudly, she can feel the vibrations of the music pulsing through her. They won a contest recently, so they get to record some of their songs, but there are a few problems... They play individually, not together so there's no cohesiveness. Their tempers get riled up very easily. They play mainly covers of other songs, so they would need to ask permission and probably pay the original songwriter royalties for that if they were to record it. And they don't have a manager.

That's where our deaf girl, Piper comes in. She agrees to manage the band, and with the help of her talented guitarist brother and the guy she plays chess with, they work on pulling the band together.

Some problems... The lead singer is an arrogant jerk, the bass player (lead singer's brother) hardly ever speaks, the lead guitarist has an extremely short temper, and there's no drummer. They also lack a second guitarist.

If I keep telling you how it goes, you'll have no reason to read it, so go read it!

It's a good read for the teens, though it might not be appropriate for kids.

Oh, and is my name Antony John? Actually, you don't know for sure, do you? But just trust me. I did not write this book. It's a good read, but not mine. 

-Kj

This Time

Hey,

I don't know if you've ever seen August Rush, but the song "This Time" is really pretty and kinda sad. 

"I wondered what would happen if I left it all behind,

Would the wind be at my back? Could I get you off my mind?

This time..."

I found a fan video for you, so if it turns off, let me know and I'll fix it up for ya.

Check it out 

-Kj

P.S. Need I say it? The song isn't mine.