Welcome to part 2 of the Bratz Megaliveblog!
After the liveblog monster ate my liveblog, it took me a while to find where I'd put The Movie one (Yeah, my computer is a very well organized mess...) but never fear! I found it and now we're back in action!
Today we'll be watching Bratz - Starrin' and Stylin, the only... 'traditionally' animated Bratz movie with no-name V As and one of the most cheesy plots to ever come into existence.
As with all the Bratz movies his movie was made to accompany the release of a set of Bratz dolls (Formal Funk), and to promote some really bad music by some (thankfully) no-name bands.
It opens with a cute little opening set to a song about how cute, fab, nice and generally better than all of us summertime girls are with visuals of the Bratz trying on various clothes and putting on make up and doing hair and every other vain beauty regime you can think of. After that torture is over it switches to the opening of every single Bratz novel ever (yes, they used to have those too) where the Cloe picks up each of the girls. Yasmin tells Jade over the phone as she's being picked up about how cool Cloe's new car is (It's not), Cloe tells her "It may be old, but it's bold Yasmin", whatever that means, and they laugh. Next is Jade's, where Jade somehow manages to throw her bag into the car from the second story. Sash is waiting right outside for the girls at her house. She tells them the car sure beats taking the bus, and Cloe agrees, mentioning how horrible she looks in yellow. On the way, they see Cade on his bike, he comments, with his rough smoker voice, about how cool her car is. The girls are very excited about this weekend, Why? It's prom (I'm assuming Junior).
The Logo appears here, BRATZ: The Video : Starrin And Stylin!
The Video. That's how old this is.
One thing you'll notice is that the characters are different from there were in both The Movie and Bratz Canon in general.
Cloe: While still being generic blond girl, rids me of my poor and clumsy jokes. In this canon, she's the personality less one.
Yasmin: Instead of the Journalism thing being some sort of artifact here, Yasmin does run a school newspaper column. A couple of years ago Yas moved to Stilesville and became friends with the Bratz, making her the newest addition.
Sasha: Is no longer a cheerleader but a control freak. She is head of the prom planning comitte but is still obsessed with hip hop because she's black. Also due to her blackness is her 'hip' vocabulary.
Jade: Jade is still the fashionista but has lost a considerable amount of brainpower. I would say this makes the movie sexist, but everybody, including the boys, in an idiot. Here she's such a fashionista that writing a column about how non-fashionable an outfit of hers was is actually big school news.
Cameron: Is still Cloe's love interest, but here it's more Will They or Won't They? and Everyone Can See It, he's also into being a man (I'm serious, he fixes cars for fun).
Dylan: Is no longer deaf and in love with Yasmin, in fact, as far as this non-canon thing and general canon itself, he's in love with Jade. He's the metrosexual guy, with every stereotype about how they're all obsessed with getting girls intact.
Koby: Is new to this liveblog but is an old stay of Bratz canon, part of the AV club.
And of course, the various mouthpieces pretending to be 'characters' that are only here to say "This Doll Exists! Buy Her/Him!"
Another thing of note, I'll probably be complaining about how annoying the Only Six Faces thing is in Bratz-canon, somehow, by being non-canon, this movie managed to avert this trope. If you tried really hard maybe you'd recognize a couple of them, but in the later movies all you have to do is casually look around the scene you're watching and you'll see at least five Dylans/Sharidans.
Now, back to the movie!
The movie stars:
...
...
You have got to be kidding me.
Yasmin, Cloe, Sasha and Jade.
And it features:
...
This is so dumb.
Cameron and Dylan.
So... is this like those Barbie plays people movies? Or is this just a cute little thing? It's annoying, I mean, VA's work hard, animators work hard, directors work hard, putting that all aside to sell more dolls and not give them the recognition they deserve is just nasty. Don't worry though, MGA grew out of this... and into sweatshopping in China. Oh Corporate, good thing you have Legal on your side.
Anyways, Mr. Del Rio (A big deal with this movie and the various novels that came around it's release, he might as well be Stiles Highs only teacher) is explaining how artists express themselves, through paint, sculpture and...
"Gucci used fabric and scissors!" Jade interrupts, annoying the heck out of anybody who knows anything about fashion. Gucci hardly ever had to do anything after building the fashion house. YES Jade, FASHION DESIGNERS DON'T DESIGN EVERYTHING.
And have you ever wondered about trends, if 'fashion' (In quotes, since there are actual fashion artists) was such an artform, wouldn't every design house's work the different and not creepily uniform every season? FASHION DESIGNER, They're like engineers, except public demand is what drives their work. LABEL FASHION IS NOT ART JADE.
Sorry, just had to get that out.
Mr. Del Rio is clearly annoyed, but gets over it and gives them their assignment: They must all come up with a statement of self-expression through any medium at all.The lunch bell rings and Cloe interrupts, saying she expresses herself daily through her passion for fashion.
Yes, Cloe, that's exactly why you, Yasmin and Sasha are currently wearing the same outfit in different colours and your top in a slight alteration.
"You go girl!" Sasha yells. Mr. Del Rio tells her to challenge herself and find a new medium, which is pretty good advice from a very good art teacher (Yes, I like this guy a bit now). Sasha asks-
Wait a second, I just have to say, Jade's VA sounds so freaking stoned all the time it's not funny anymore (And we're four minutes in!). Just wanted to mention that.
Back to the movie video; Sasha asks if they can work in groups...
Groups
Self-expression.
Mr. Del Rio, already knowing how horrible these girls are at thinking for themselves, tells them they can since he has no time to bring them out of Teen Vogue-land. He gives them a condition though: Everybody must be equally represented.
Mr. Del Rio is actually a pretty fair guy, I mean, usually teachers in fiction are horrible people, but I actually like him. He's just the kind of guy I sucked up to when I was in high school.
The assignment is due first thing next week, due 1/4th of the semesters grade. The entire class thinks this is most unfair, since this is prom weekend... and prom is their top priority!
Girls, I bet none of you will even remember either prom in 3-4 years, but that F? It'll matter because I dunno, you failed a class because of it? He doesn't budge though, so the girls feel free to bad mouth him once he's out of earshot.
We get a Jade eyecatch, which features her logo (The Stylized cat head) and some photos that just scream "Buy this doll! And this one! And this one! And this one!"
Sasha tells the girls, in hip-speak, that what Mr. D isn't hip to is that Prom's what they're about this weekend. They should really just get over this, but they don't, because they're idiots. Why not just do the assignment in the week before Prom, y'know, like starting now?
The girls are at their lockers where they meet Dylan and Cameron. Dyl is wearing way too much of this new cologne and the girls plus Cam taunt him about it. He doesn't mind though, so Yas brings their attention back to the crisis de jour. Prom. Girls.
GET!
OVER!
IT!
Cloe tells Cam about prom, Sasha says they should feel sorry for her because she's prom committe chair (Why not quit due to your new heavy workload?). Dylan tries to lighten the mood, talking about how nobody will want to miss his prom outfit. Yes, in case you haven't noticed, Dylan is the only boy in the universe with a fashion passion bigger that all the Bratz' combined. The writers, afraid of introducing such a concept as 'relationships' into a cartoon, decide the Bratz, Cam and Dyl are all going as a group.
Jade wants to get out of the assignment, but Cameron (Who has somehow changed clothes in the last four seconds) tells them they should work it out. The girls brainstorm, Sasha decides they should make prom part of the assignment. Yas has an idea, but brushes it off, the girls get noticeably angry with her (Is this a thing? Every movie must include at least one 'Let's hate Yasmin' sequence?) and tell her to spit it out. Her idea is that they should make a video about their lives and use it to document their lives until prom and then hand that in as the assignment. Problem is: They don't have a camera.
In true Bratz fiction style, Dylan and Cameron appear (Dylan's VA is the only person in the world who can say 'Funky fashion friends' and not sound stupidly insane, by the way) who tell them Koby in the AV club has a bunch of borrowable cameras. So they decide to go see him.
The bell rings and Cameron and Dylan bail for their next class. Dylan says he hates to leave "his girls" in such a situation, but he has to. Sasha pulls him back and asks him to repeat his 'chauvinistic' statement. The Bratz make sure to tell us their "NOBODY'S GIRLS" after surrounding Dylan menacingly. This was probably the writers Take That! at everyone who says the Bratz are cheap puerto rican hookers with bad plastic surgery, but it just comes off as mean and BLAM-ey. Why?
- 50% of Bratz dolls do look like hookers with bad plastic surgery.
- It makes them come off as some sort of evil gang minus the guns and knives and blood.
- It was clear that Dylan was joking, making it more mean-spirited. of course, Dylan being the genius he is, still hangs out with them later.
Koby finds them a camera and tells them how to work it. Clearly afraid of them, he says 'ladies' after almost calling them 'girls'. Feminists sure would enjoy being lumped in with this group of crazies.
Koby was the true directorial genius behind titles such as: Glee Club Reloaded (WAY before it was cool and It seems like Dylan is in the Glee Club...) and Mr Mellmans Corner: The Principal with Principals! (Cloe apparently napped through that one and the girls share a giggle behind Koby's back. Our Heroines, ladies and gentlemen.) Obviously, Koby wears a sweatervest because that just wasn't nerdy enough. He's now working on... the girls leave before he can finish up. We learn that it's called Recycling Stiles though. I like Koby, he actually has a goal (Filmmaker) and he's working towards it using the topics that are all around him. The movie? No, it just says GEEK ALERT and runs away laughing.
So just to recap: This scene was about a really nice guy borrowing the Bratz a camera and the Bratz laughing at how 'nerdy' he is and leaving before he can even hold a conversation with them. Go girls!
We get another eyecatch, this time it's Sasha. Her logo is a stylized two legged rabbit and there are more outfits. One is even a runway pic.
Sasha tells us the camera is going to dish out the best projest in class. Probably not, since you have to have half a brain to actually make a good project. Yasmin, the sweet naive little girl she is, is reading the school newspaper, which nobody else does. But Yas shows them a new column called 'Daily Doings' being written by Anonymous (Wait, their school is has freaking ANONYMOU-oh wait, as in actual anonymity...). The girls immediately assume it's a gossip column, but it isn't. They give Yas back the newspaper. Why? It's boring.
This movie really hates anybody different doing things they like. Anonynmous is writing about stuff that happens at their school. I can just imagine the future, where the Bratz refuse to read anything about the recession and global warming because they find it boring. You know what's boring, when the huge sandworms from the project you signed off on BORE THROUGH YOUR SKIN because you signed the evil scientists grant without looking at the project because it's BORING.
Okay, extreme example, but it's a clear lesson: Learning about things going on around you that are not gossip is boring.
They forget about it and Jade turns on the video camera, filming Cloe, she tells Cloe that they should go outside to the football field because the natural light will make her "Shine!". Yes, because holding a camera for four seconds makes you an expert on lighting.
On the field, Cloe talks about herself into the camera. You can call her Angel because that's what she is... un-huh, she's all about expressing herself through her behaviour, her "very flashy attitude" (THAT IS NOT A GOOD THING CLOE GET HELP) and most importantly (Really?) fashion. She loves to paint and draw, shop and even school (Even with all the homework). As soon as I see proof of the painting, drawing and loving school, I'll totally believe you. She wants a bottled water machine in the cafeteria and more mirrors in the girls bathroom, she also thinks this is enough of a platform to run for student president, therefore proving that she's a dumb spoiled rich kid. She gets back on 'focus', because Prom is on saturday and that's freaking IMPORTANT if we didn't already know. She leaves suddenly and Jade goes after her.
Yet another eyecatch, this time it's one for Cloe, (Her symbol is a pair of angel wings/a mustache and a halo, if you wanted to know). Back in the real world, we're with Cloe and Sasha in the gym. Lots of people are helping out in the gym, Cloe wants to record the deep thoughts of the prom committe chair on camera, so Sasha gives her an insight into her mind.
Sasha is known as Bunny Boo to her friends, because she loves the hip hop thing and her friends hate her. She doesn't discriminate though, because she loves all sorts of music, just like musically challenged seventh grader. She also loves hanging out with her friends, which is why the volunteered to have stress all but poured over her and signed up to be the prom committee chair. She hands meygan a balloon she was just filling up. Meygan looks like a much more interesting protagonist, if only for her Anime Hair, but she doesn't even speak. The prom theme she picked is formal funk because the marketing department decided to go with that name for the doll line. Surely enough, Sash has everybody working effectively, Sasha even namedrops some Bratz who never show up again. But Sasha is angry with Dana, whose merely been throwing flowers around, because they have to be arranged.
She generally gets all control freaky.
Oh wait, Dana does show up later, IM-ing with Yasmin in the next scene, in the middle of class no less. Anyways, Yasmin says bye and turns to Sasha, who starts filming her for her segment.
Sasha yells action to Pretty Princess. I'll admit, this nickname didn't make sense until Yasmin's style changed from 'Bohemian mess' to 'Somewhat hooker-ish princess' around 2009, but they say it's because... no, no explanation.
Yasmin recently moved here and was very nervous until she met her new best friends Cloe, Sasha and Jade. Somehow despite only being in school a couple of months Yasmin has already gone on ski-trips and celebrated many birthday parties with them according to her narration. She loves to read Mystery novels (???), "And write" as Sasha adds as Yasmin prints something. Yasmin acts secretive and hides it from Sasha, then rushes out after being saved by the bell.
Without an eyecatch, we're suddenly at the beach (Yas is the only one without an eyecatch right now). It's a sunny day and...
Wait, they said there were no weekends between this week and prom, they even said this was prom week, why are they at the beach mid-week? It must be very far from their houses since suburban stilesville looks nothing like a beachside place, it even has lots and lots of greenery! If they'd just done a traditional project they could have used this time to WORK ON IT!.. Oh wait, now I get it,it's to show off the Beach Party outfits.
Jade narrates and is immediately shot down for showing interest in filmography. She should be focused on the Bratz barely there bikini's! Cloe has drawn up a prom outfit... I think. Cloe starts being dramatic, making Sasha throw a blanket at her and ruining Jade's shot. They make some bad puns. The girls are getting nervous, their doing well on their project but haven't picked out their outfits. No worries though, Yas has her outfit picked out already, all she needs are some shoes. Jade has a fashion idea, she shows a... pretty cool and unique look to the girls and is immediately shot down.
Remember when I said they hate everything different? This is one of those moments...
They make a lot of fun as well. Not the good kind, the bullying kind. I mean, the outfit wasn't even as outlandish as they're making it out to be.
Moving on, Cameron and Dylan show up, but the girls are too into their fashion mags to care. Cloe shows Dylan the design she m-
Wait, as much as I bet you guys don't want to be spoiled on the eventual prom outfits, this is the dress she does wear, and if the movie starts on a Monday then she has about four days left to make it, she's 16 and has a life, plus this isn't Project Runway, what was the point of this scene? To create a Plot Hole? She can't have designed and worn her eventual prom outfit due to NOT HAVING TIME TO ACTUALLY MAKE IT!
Whatever, Cameron says it'll look great on her and Dylan tells them he's working on getting them a car. They make fun of him again, because the Bratz are that evil.
Sasha doesn't want any more prom talk, so she tunes them out with her headphones and the guys leave. The girls start relaxing.
Later that day... in the afternoon (??? Did they skip school to go to the beach? Why do they even care about the art class grade if they BARELY ATTEND CLASSES?), Cloe, not paying attention to the road to talk about wind-blown hair, crashes the car because she doesn't want to hit a skunk (Which she thinks is a chihuaha).
I'm sorry to say this, but they deserve it.
Sasha tells Cloe that next time she'll be driving. Sorry Sasha, as okay as that would be it's not your car, it's hers.
Everyone comes out of it without a scratch, but the car is totalled. Like, really totalled, it hit a tree and everything.
They pick up their stuff which somehow fell out of the car. They conform that the beach is way too far from town to push the car so yeah, they did skip school. A sound scares them, but it's merely the skunk, which they all think is a cat, Jade even PICKS IT UP AND PUTS IT IN THE CAR! Sasha uses Yasmin's cell to call the guys to help them out. They want them to fix it, since they don't want to ride bikes to the prom (Or I dunno, JUST NOT GO).
Jade grabs the skunk (WHICH IS OBVIOUSLY A SKUNK!)... wait, wouldn't it have sprayed her as soon as she touched it? Anyways, it sprays them all aside from Sasha who was on the phone. Yasmin tries to get some footage in, but everybody is too annoyed by their horrible ditch day to care.
Cameron and Dylan arrive while Cloe is monologuing dramatically to the camera. Yasmin asks Cameron to fix a car, but he can't since it's tota- WHAT, HOW CAN YOU FIX THAT YOU TEENAGER? YOU KNOW WHY PEOPLE GO TO MECHANIC SCHOOL? BECAUSE THEY LEARN HOW TO FIX TOTALLED CARS!... Sorry, but this is just too unrealistic even for a Bratz movie.
Well, guys, see you next time...
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