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twirlyduck
Reviews
Dance Moms (2011)
A new low from Abby Lee
I've watched this show from the start and Abby Lee Miller has always been something of a tutelage monster, but a line got crossed in the April 9th (2013) episode where she pitted Maddie and Chloe against each other in solo dances. She's done that before, but she will never realize that a clear winner really can never be found between Maddie and Chloe as long as Abby does the choreography for both girls because she always favors Maddie. If Abby really wanted a fair contest between the two girls, she'd get a neutral choreographer. However, what made Abby nastier than usual is that she had the moms and the other kids vote for which girl they felt did the best.
Abby, her copious hand leaning on the voting box, stood there as each child and mom placed their votes in the box. If you were a little girl and knew Maddie was Abby's favorite and Chloe was the girl she treated like a red-headed stepchild, who would you vote for if you feared Abby standing their lurking over the voting box would know who you were voting for? We weren't shown how 'private' the voting process was. Two of the voters were 7 years old. Did they write down their votes? Were they given both names already printed out and then placed one of them in the 'heavily' guarded voting box? The moms are worse. They vote the way Abby wants because they don't want their child treated with disfavor and Abby will take her loathing for a mom out on the child. It's a lose/lose for all involved.
So, if Maddie wins and Chloe loses (she had been 'benched' by Abby, so she wasn't exactly getting practice), i.e. Abby gets what she wants, why does she keep attacking Chloe? Simple, Chloe won a national championship that Abby wanted Maddie to win and it is stuck deep in Abby's craw. To be honest, Chloe is the child most likely to grow up to be a recognized dancer. Her dancing doesn't rely on the Maddie-style of melodrama. She's tall and will get taller. She has a dancer's body, but she has a spiteful teacher who wants to hold her back. If Chloe's mom really wants her daughter to be a dancer, take her to a real teacher who believes in her.
The Life of David Gale (2003)
When a screenwriter falls in love with himself ...
He writes something like this. David Gale, who fronts for the voice of screenwriter Charles Randolph in this movie, spews erudite bon mots with all the subtlety of a Gatling gun. Gale merely exists to let us all know how gosh darn well educated Randolph is in this preachy big screen wallow. Unfortunately, that left little room to make David Gale a sympathetic character. He, like all good cliche college professors, cheated on his wife with a student. But I guess even 'smaht Hahvud' professors listen with Little David when a hot young student with motive for revenge asks to be battered and bruised during consensual sex and Big David couldn't see he was being set up for a rape charge.
Alas, he was so charged. His job, reputation and marriage all went down the drain in short order. He decided to moonlight as a drunkard because heaven knows a college professor can't sling hash at Betty's Chirp and Burp to make ends meet. On the bright side, though, Randolph imbued David with inane highbrow banter as he staggered to skidrow and a murder charge.
Enter Bitsey! Yes, I said Bitsey. Not a familiar name where you come from? Well, friend, I can tell right now that your blood isn't blue and your college walls weren't crawling with ivy. Bitsey was probably best friends with Muffy and Tad in her well-groomed activist campus days. Bitsey, like David, is a voice for the screenwriter. Her function is to let us know that Randolph is a snob who has never eaten in a restaurant that has pictures of food on the menu and who is appalled that there are more churches in the South than Starbucks.
I'm afraid, as you can see, my critique is more of the screenwriter Charles Randolph than it is of the movie, but that's where bad movies start and end. Randolph's sneering contempt for people he feels are beneath him, or who have the audacity to not share his political views, taints the entire movie and makes for very lopsided shallow storytelling.