Crossroads

Plot synopsis:
Lucy (Britney Spears), Kit (Zoë Saldana), and Mimi (Taryn Manning) are three friends who live in a small Georgia town. While as young children, they bury a "wish box" and vow to dig it up on the night of their high school graduation, also pledging to stay best friends forever. However, as they grow up, their friendship fades due to their different approaches of high school: Lucy becomes the introverted valedictorian, Kit becomes the most popular girl in school, and Mimi is an outcast from a trailer park and facing teenage pregnancy. On the night of their graduation, they keep their promise and get together to open the "wish box". As they start talking again, they remember their old wishes while burying the box: Mimi wanted to travel to California, Lucy wanted to find the mother she cannot remember, and Kit wanted to get married. Mimi brings up the topic of going to Los Angeles for a record contract audition. Kit and Lucy try to convince Mimi to not go all the way to Los Angeles due to the fact that she's pregnant and anything dangerous can happen. However the next morning they decide to go together but each doing something separate; Mimi going to the audition, Kit visiting her fiancé and Lucy to see her mother in Tucson, Arizona.
They set out on the road with little money in a yellow 1973 Buick Skylark convertible with a guy named Ben (Anson Mount). Lucy, however, leaves without the permission of her overbearing father Pete (Dan Aykroyd), who wakes up the next day to find his daughter is gone. Shortly into their journey, the car breaks down. They realise that they don't have enough money between them for the travel or the repair costs. Mimi then suggests that she sing karaoke at a local bar, where good singers are tipped well by the customers. While at the bar, the girls dress up and go the stage to perform. However, when the song starts Mimi develops stage fright, being unable to sing. Seeing that they needed the money, Lucy takes her place, and quickly becomes a hit with the crowd. They make enough money to fix the car and continue on their way.
Shortly after the group checks into a motel, Kit tells the girls that she heard a rumor about Ben, commenting that he had recently been released from jail, after killing someone. The girls then spend most of the journey feeling uneasy around him, until they confront him. Ben reveals that he was in jail for driving his step-sister across state borders without parental consent, after his father was abusing her. Having established that Ben was not the assassin they imagined him to be, Lucy and Ben grow closer. The girls talk properly to each other for the first time since they were kids. Lucy reveals that her mother left her and her father when she was a child, but she is convinced her mother wants to find her, but is too afraid. Kit, who was overweight as a child, has an overbearing mother who sent her to "fat camp" but now cannot stand that her daughter is more beautiful than her. Mimi reveals that the baby's father was not her boyfriend, but a guy who raped her after she got drunk at a party.
After they arrive in Arizona, Lucy finally meets her mother Caroline after eighteen years; however, Caroline is not happy to see Lucy. She reveals that she has remarried, and that she now has two sons ages seven and ten. She reveals to Lucy that she was an unintended pregnancy and that she wants nothing to do with her, and Lucy leaves the house heartbroken. Promptly arriving at the motel, Ben comforts her. The following day, Lucy rejoins the others and goes on to Los Angeles. When they arrive, Kit brings Mimi along to surprise her fiance, Dylan. While alone in the hotel, Lucy gives her virginity to Ben and they fall in love with each other. When Kit and Mimi arrive to Dylan's place, it is revealed that he is cheating on Kit after they see another girl in his apartment. Already upset, Kit suddenly realizes that it was Dylan who raped Mimi and got her pregnant, and she punches him. Scared, Mimi runs away, and falls down the stairs. Consequently, she loses her baby. Because of this, Lucy decides to call her father to take her and the girls back home. However her father is still putting pressure on Lucy to do what he wants. After the entire journey she realizes that everything she's done has been to please her father instead of herself. Lucy tells her father to let her go and she runs after Ben, they embrace and kiss each other. She and the girls decide to stay with Ben and go to the audition. They receive a standing ovation after their performance of Lucy's poem; I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman."This time we didn't make any wishes for the future... We said goodbye to our past. Now, none of us have any idea where life's gonna take us. 'Cause what we have is now, and right now... we have Each Other."

Tags: melodrama

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