Hey folks, Harry here... I can't imagine sitting in a theater and watching this film. For me, it was that point in the trailer where she begins singing the worst version of I LOVE ROCK-N-ROLL, where I just wanted to reach into my computer's reality, rip Britney out of it and make her gargle a mouthful of glass and ammonia. Just end that singing voice. TERRIBLE. However, I have to say that the majority of the problems she's having with this film are Sound Mix issues, color timing issues and syncing issues... Usually for Test Screenings, they do a decent albeit rough job of this before testing, but here... here it sounds like this was an EXTREMELY ROUGH PRINT. It's coming out in February... will they fix it all and save Britney's oh so hot film career? We'll see..
Hi Harry,
Ok, so I've never written to you about any of the free screenings I've been able to catch here in NYC (and there have been a ton) but I figured that maybe this one deserved an e-mail.
So here goes nothing. Literally. I got the chance to see Britney Spears Crossroads last night and I was thoroughly upset. Upset not because the little teen pop princess makes me want to puke but because that is 1 hour and 45 minutes of my life which I will never get back. I won't give you a recap of the whole movie because I hope everyone went to apple to download it but think of every single teen movie made and roll it into one movie, add bad acting, bad writing, bad music, horrible lighting and sound, and bake for 1 3/4 hours. This is Crossroads. This movie covers teen drinking, teen smoking, long distance relationships, lack of relationships, teen sex, teen pregnancy, divorce, rape and of course most importantly, Britney's main story line, being misunderstood.
As for the technical stuff, lighting, sound, camera shake, etc...they were almost worse than the storyline. I'll give them that its not supposed to some out until February 2002 so they haven't had a chance to clean up everything but this was just unacceptable. I would never in my life screen a movie to the public like this. Although my friend who went with me was most annoyed but the lighting problems (every frame was lit differently, yes EVERY FRAME) my pet peeve was with the sound. First off, the ADR (when an actor redoes their lines in a studio) was extremely apparent. Lip flap was everywhere as where shots of the back of peoples heads so you couldn't see their lips moving. Also the ambiance changes every frame also. For those of you who don't know sound, ambience is the background noise. Real life, as in non-studio sound, has a genlte hum to it. Even when its silent its never really silent unless you are in a soundproof room. Well if you are three girls and a guy sitting on the side of a highway there is highway noise, wind, cars just the general sound of being outside. I don't know if I can explain it to you well. You might just have to have seen a movie that sounds like this but when you are watching these people on the side of the road and the general ambiance changes from highway sounds to sounds to silence its not a good sign. But they might fix it by February. I hope to GOD they do. Lighting was just as bad of a story. Nothing was fixed yet and I don't think any of the crew knew how to white balance a camera so the shots looked totally unacceptable. In one scene, Britney is sitting in a bed with Justin Long in her bra and underwear getting ready to have sex (yes people BRITNEY HAS SEX!!) and the room is extremely dimly lit. Next shot it is so bright that it looks like the whole room ate some kind os nuclear element.
Enough of the technical crap though. Those things migh be fixable by February. The story was just plain old bad. I had to lie about my age to get into the film because as expected they were catering to the 12-17 year old age group. But it was pretty damn obvious Britney wanted to be able to show off her body to the men in the audience. Their coldn't be more Britney skin except for maybe the MTV Awards. All the the story lines (see above) were covered but not in any manner worth speaking of. Thy tried to put so much into the film that they forgot about character development and story development. They put teen drinking in there just for shits and giggles so people could start seeing Brit as a "bad" girl. The other characters were trite and stereotypical. The lovestory beween the gorgeous Anson Mount and Brit was quite simply lame and rushed along. The one scene they changed from the trailer which I was upset about because I got a good laugh was when she gets to her mother door and says "Momma. It's me. Lucy." We no longer get to see one of the worse bits of acting in the move because when she says that the camerashot is from behind Brit's head instead of a face close up on Brit. Damn.
Ok, well I don't have much more to say except don't waste you time. Or do what I did. Waste you time and yell thing like "That synthesizer sounds great on you voice!"
Lot of love and wishes for better movies,
Kirstin
