Bratz (2007)

Bratz (2007)
Sasha you stupid cheerleader! - Yasmin to Sasha
Genre: Musical Comedy Directed By: Sean McNamara Written By/Screenplay: Susan Estelle Jansen Adam de la Peña David Eilenberg Starring: Nathalia Ramos Skyler Shaye Logan Browning Janel Parrish Chelsea Kane Jon Voight Annelise van der Pol Malese Jow Photography: Color Distributed By: Lionsgate Release Date: August 3, 2007 Runtime: 105 minutes Country: United States Prequel: Sleep Over Adventure (By Air Date) Sequel: Super Babyz (By Air Date)

Bratz (also known as Bratz: The Movie) is a 2007 American live-action musical comedy film based on the Bratz dolls, the animated series and the direct-to-video movies of the same name. It's serves as the fallow-up to Sleep Over Adventure, is the first and only Bratz movie to be both live action and theatrical, and is overall the eight film in the Bratz series. The film also spawned two video-games: Bratz 4 Real for PC and Nintendo DS which follows the movie, as well as Bratz: The Movie For the Wii, Playstation 2 and Game Boy Advance.

Plot

Fashion mavens Yasmin, Jade, Sasha and Cloe face unexpected challenges to a lifelong bond during their first year at Carry Nation High School, where senior Meredith Baxter Dimly rules the school's social cliques with an iron fist. As peer pressure threatens to divide the girls into social cliques, they learn how to band together and how to achieve true empowerment.

Why It Suckz

1. Making a film based on Bratz is a questionable idea from the get-go, considering that said toyline is controversial.
2. Executive meddling: Originally this movie was going to be an animated movie, However later it was changed into a live-action movie.
3. Extremely bad grasp of the source material with the exception of the character’s names. For example:
   • In the TV show, the Bratz run their own teen magazine, But in the film, they don't.
     • The girls look really nothing like their original designs, Yasmin Looks more like Meygan and has a personality close to Dana for some reason.
   • The main antagonists of the show, Kirstee, Kaycee and Burdine aren't in this movie nor are they mentioned, instead being replaced by Meredith, unifying their personalities into one.
   • The girls didn't get their name for a contest, in the show they got them for their fashion magazine, despite also being referred as Bratz by the villain in one scene.
   • The girls look like young adults when they're supposed to be 16-year olds.
   • With the exception of the main 4 girls and a few other characters, none of the other characters (such as Cameron) from the dolls or the CGI animated show appear in this movie, although the connected toy line includes Sharidan, who is not in the movie.
4. Predictable and clichéd plot that feels more like your average teen movie. As the audience is capable of guessing everything that happens only a short way into the movie; the Queen Bee is gonna try to ruin the main girls' friendship, but they still stick together through it all and realize that they should just be themselves in the end.
5. While the soundtrack is decent for the most part, some of it can be pretty bad. The most noteworthy examples being the introduction music to the movie (which just doesn’t feel right, as it fits more into a fairytale genre than a highschool genre) and Meredith's song "It's All About Me" (which is, as you can already tell by the title a song dedicated solely to her glorifying herself and the lyrics are downright unoriginal and pathetic).
6. It uses the clichéd "be yourself" moral, but in a very sexist way.
   • Speaking of the moral, it's feels mixed and convoluted. Because given how the entire theme of the Bratz in general is mainly the fact that the girls act like pampered and spoiled valley girls, a message about being yourself would likely be one of the last things that should be conveyed from any form of Bratz media.
7. Terrible acting, especially from Logan Browning, Skyler Shaye and Nathalia Ramos who are poor casting choices and pretty much didn’t even try to give the characters a very lively performance and mostly looks goofy and unnatural. Keep in mind this was they're first movie they ever starred in, So they’re acting talent at the time wasn’t exactly experienced. Not to mention that in spite of the movie being in live-action, there can actually be bad lip-syncing present in it as well (believe it or not). For example, when Yasmin gives her mother a pair of chocolates and the latter exclaims "Los chocolates!", her mother doesn't move and simply stays open even while she's talking.
   • Logan Browning wasn’t even a leading role to play Sasha, as she was a little too old to portray a teenager.
8. Dumb and unfunny jokes with an overusage of racist stereotypes such as Mexicans (i.e., Yasmin's mother is Mexican and has an obsession with chocolate and also has mariachi bands living with her).
9. Dylan is supposed to be deaf, but the way he's written and portrayed isn't accurate to how deaf people act. Like AniMat said, The movie easily could've said he was blind, mute, or even had a learning difficulty and nothing would change.
10. Laughable and corny dialogue. The biggest examples are Sasha's "I'm the kid, you're supposed to be the adults", and Yasmin's "Sasha, you stupid cheerleader!".
11. The film represents more of middle school than high school due to how the characters act and how the school is managed. In spite of the fact that all of the characters are teenagers.
12. Meredith is an incredibly ludicrous antangonist as she is much of a spoiled snobbish daddy's girl who does in the film is stalk the Bratz and one of those clichéd popular girl characters. While at least the villains had their own moments and a good hatred on the Bratz, but Meredith doesn’t. Not to mention that her decision to throw another "Super Sweet 16 Party" in order to execute her plan was really stupid. As she could've thrown any other type of party or maybe even just a party for the sake of a party. But instead, she clearly had to have another party to celebrate her truning 16 even though she already turned 16 prior to her even planning the party.
    • On the topic of the party, this also creates a massive problem. The girls know that the party is just to split them up, so the rational option would be to just not go, but they end up going anyway despite knowing what the purpose is.
13. On top of the stereotypical high school clichés that make up a majority of the cast (i.e., goths, jocks, nerds, etc), there are also cliques that don't exist in real-life schools like Mimes and people who wear dinosaur hats.
14. Bad CGI effects. One example is where Jade does a lab experiment and fireworks came out and it looks obviously fake. And on the subject of bad special effects, the credits also have cheap fonts such as Comic Sans.
15. In the scenes where Cloe plays soccer and riding a moped, they could have had used a stunt double for her because it doesn't look anything like her.
16. Absurd editing. A major example being when Jade slips on Cloe's spaghetti after the latter dropped as a result of Meredith's Pomeranian dog and ends up falling into and rolling away in a trash bin. Because due to the editing, it simply shows her slipping and them riding the trash bin without showing her actually falling into it.
17. Most of the costumes are lackluster, as they barely look faithful to the Bratz's clothes like said before.
18. Too many pop culture references and blatant product placements such as Mac, MTV, and Nokia.
19. Horrendous and poorly-blurred camera that looks like something from a mid 90's film instead of somwthing made in 2007.
20. The Bratz themselves lack chemistry with each other and are jerks towards one another. Which is completely opposite of what it's supposed to be as by the original dolls and the cartoon: They’re supposed to be best friends. For example, when Meredith's Pomeranian dog accidently causes Cloe's lunch to fall on Jade and it starts a chain of events which ultimately results in the entire school breaking out into a foodfight. And even though Cloe dropping her food on Jade and the latter later causing Sasha to slip on a skateboard which causes Yasmin to fall in her own food was all clearly an accident, the girls still start screaming at and blaming each other for what happened rather than actually being understanding towards one another and towards the fact that none of them did it on purpose (like how friends should act towards one another).
21. When singing (except on Jade) it looks fake as they don't look like they are actually singing and are lip-syncing instead, this is because Janel Parrish was the only one who was actually singing, while the others were lip syncing.

Redeeming Qualityz

1. Some of the soundtrack is decent. Like the ending song Bratitude.
2. Janel Parrish, Ian Nelson and Jon Voight give decent and tolerable performances in this film, even know it’s clear that these aren’t their best performances.
3. Dylan, despite being a stereotype is the only likable character in this movie, way more likable than he was in the cartoon show.

Reception

Bratz was universally panned by critics, movie goers and fans of the dolls alike. It received a 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 78 reviews, with an average rating 3/10. The site's critical consensus, "Full of mixed messages and dubious role-models, Bratz is too shallow even for its intended audience." It has also received a 3.0/10 on IMDb and a 21/100 on Metacritic based on 21 reviews indicating generally unfavorable reviews. Many criticized the movie for it's acting, plot sharing too much Similarities to the 2004 movie Mean Girls and the 2006 Disney Channel TV movie High School Musical, Humor and it's unfaithfulness to the Doll-line that the movie is based on. Animat Gave the movie a 1/10 with a Garbage seal of approval, with him considering it the worst movie he has ever reviewed, WatchMojo.com spotted the movie at number 6 on their list of the Top 10 Worst Movies Based on Toys.

Box Office

Bratz grossed $10 million in North America and $16 million in other territories for a total gross of $26 million.

In its opening weekend, the film grossed $4.2 million, finishing in 10th place at the box office making it a box office bomb as the film had been beaten by larger scale films such as mh:greatestmovies:The Simpsons Movie, Transformers and mh:greatestmovies:Ratatouille.

Awardz and nominationz

The film was nominated for five Golden Razzie Awards. Janel Parrish, Nathalia Ramos, Skyler Shaye and Logan Browning as Jade, Yasmin, Cloe and Sasha were all nominated for Worst Actress, but lost to Lindsay Lohan as the dual role of Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss in I Know Who Killed Me. Jon Voight was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor (along with National Treasure: Book of Secrets, September Dawn and mh:greatestmovies:Transformers as Patrick Henry Gates, Jacob Samuelson and John Keller) (respectively), but lost to Eddie Murphy as Mr. Wong in Norbit. The film was also nominated for Worst Screen Couple for "Any combination of two totally airheaded characters"., Worst Rip-off or remake and Worst Picture but lost all of the awards to I Know Who Killed Me.

Trivia

• The original idea was for an animated film.
• Paula Abdul was originally hired as the film's Executive Producer, Fashion Designer, and Dance Choreographer. During an episode of her reality television series Hey Paula (2007), she received an e-mail on her Blackberry firing her from this movie.
• As Janel Parrish was an experienced singer, she was the only actress who actually sang when the opportunity arose. The rest were coached on lip-synching to prepare for their musical numbers.
• Film debut of actresses: Janel Parrish, Logan Browning, Nathalia Ramos, Chelsea Kane, Malese Jow, and Anneleise van der Pol.
• Skyler Shaye is Jon Voight's god daughter and this was her 2nd time working with him since Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.
• There is a doll line connected to this movie. Despite this, the dolls look nothing like their movie counterparts and look like their normal self and it also includes Sharidan, who is not in the movie.

External Linkz

• Bratz: The Movie at the Internet Movie Database
• Bratz: The Movie on Rotten Tomatoes

Commentz

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