Suckered by promising trailer :(

Rating: 2/10 (17 September 2010)

I wanted to like this movie. It was a good concept, but it just failed for me. Without spoiling any storyline, here's just some stuff I could not get past: 1) When a movie starts with a character narration, that's just bad writing. Lazy. SHOW us, don't TELL us. That's Creative Writing 101, high school level. And the narration just never stopped. It was like listening to an audio book.
2) Everyone was just so overly quirky and funny. The main character, of course. But also her teachers, her parents especially, her friends and her enemies. All of them talked at an inhumanly fast and witty speed - like Robin Williams in the 1980s. It could be cute for a minute, or even for a whole scene, but the entire movie was just unbelievable.
3) While I'm accustomed to 20-something actors playing high school students, in this case, I was really distracted by the actors' obvious ages. For the first 15 minutes of the movie I thought they were in community college. Once I realized it was high school, I couldn't ignore how old they all looked.
4) Good storyline parts were abandoned. Sad face :( I won't ruin which parts.
It was a good idea for a story. Nearly there, had potential. But just flopped for anyone over 16 years of age. And mostly, I just wished the narration would shut up.