← Back to Reviews
in
Stargirl
2020's Stargirl is a pretentious, quirky, confusing, and ultimately pointless coming-of-age drama that is one of the oddest things I've ever seen from Disney. The film work so hard at being offbeat and quirky that its quirkiness eventually does it in as the story goes in several different directions but never commits to any of them.
Based on a novel by Jerry Spinelli, this is the story of sensitive teenager named Leo who moves to a fictional Arizona town called Mica with his widowed mom. Almost immediately Leo finds himself drawn to an odd newcomer to the school named Stargirl Caraway, who dresses like a bag lady, has a pet rat named Cinnamon, and writes songs that she performs on her ukelele. Leo's attraction to the girl gets lost in the shuffle as the girl seems to become some kind of good luck charm to the school...the school's losing football team starts to win when she comes to the field at halftime and accompanies herself on the ukelele singing a song she wrote called "Be True to Your School". It's not long before Stargirl might be casting some kind of spell over the school, bringing it all kinds of luck, including her winning a speech competition and there's even a scene that implies she might have made it rain.
Director and co-screenwriter Julia Hart seems to go a little overboard in the imaginative mounting of this story that goes in a million different directions but never settles anywhere. Initially, the story seems to be about this awkward kid Leo, who provides a pretentious narration to provide backstory, and how this Stargirl has affected his life. Then the story seems to be about Stargirl and how she has affected the school. We see how Leo's friendship affects his real friends, but that never gets efficiently addressed. Neither does the story's implications that Stargirl might have some kind of "powers". If she does, just like Mary Poppins or Nanny on the sitcom Nanny and the Professor, she never admits to them. And just when she has the entire school behind her, she makes a bold move at a football game that turns the whole school against her.
Her explanation for why she makes this move doesn't work, or her pretentious speech at the regional speech competition that she has to take her shoes off before delivering. Her breakup with Leo and the phony John Hughes finale that took forever to play out didn't work for me either. This was a strange and confusing cinematic experience that just went on and on and on and on...Incredibly, a sequel was released this year called Hollywood Stargirl, upon which I think I'll be taking a hard pass.
2020's Stargirl is a pretentious, quirky, confusing, and ultimately pointless coming-of-age drama that is one of the oddest things I've ever seen from Disney. The film work so hard at being offbeat and quirky that its quirkiness eventually does it in as the story goes in several different directions but never commits to any of them.
Based on a novel by Jerry Spinelli, this is the story of sensitive teenager named Leo who moves to a fictional Arizona town called Mica with his widowed mom. Almost immediately Leo finds himself drawn to an odd newcomer to the school named Stargirl Caraway, who dresses like a bag lady, has a pet rat named Cinnamon, and writes songs that she performs on her ukelele. Leo's attraction to the girl gets lost in the shuffle as the girl seems to become some kind of good luck charm to the school...the school's losing football team starts to win when she comes to the field at halftime and accompanies herself on the ukelele singing a song she wrote called "Be True to Your School". It's not long before Stargirl might be casting some kind of spell over the school, bringing it all kinds of luck, including her winning a speech competition and there's even a scene that implies she might have made it rain.
Director and co-screenwriter Julia Hart seems to go a little overboard in the imaginative mounting of this story that goes in a million different directions but never settles anywhere. Initially, the story seems to be about this awkward kid Leo, who provides a pretentious narration to provide backstory, and how this Stargirl has affected his life. Then the story seems to be about Stargirl and how she has affected the school. We see how Leo's friendship affects his real friends, but that never gets efficiently addressed. Neither does the story's implications that Stargirl might have some kind of "powers". If she does, just like Mary Poppins or Nanny on the sitcom Nanny and the Professor, she never admits to them. And just when she has the entire school behind her, she makes a bold move at a football game that turns the whole school against her.
Her explanation for why she makes this move doesn't work, or her pretentious speech at the regional speech competition that she has to take her shoes off before delivering. Her breakup with Leo and the phony John Hughes finale that took forever to play out didn't work for me either. This was a strange and confusing cinematic experience that just went on and on and on and on...Incredibly, a sequel was released this year called Hollywood Stargirl, upon which I think I'll be taking a hard pass.