ManwiththePlan
Since: Dec, 2009
05/25/2012 00:00:00
I couldn't agree more with this: Bella Thorne, Zendaya, and whoever played the uptight jerky guy who became Bella Thorne's Love Interest were the only genuinely entertaining parts of the movie for me. Everything else...bad, really bad. Why couldn't they just do a movie based on Avalon and Halley? Hell, why did they shove their plot in the middle of the movie when they were the most recurring characters and Halley was even narrating the whole thing, so there's should have been last?
RobbieRotten
Since: Nov, 2009
10/24/2013 00:00:00
I like the idea of it being 3 stories, which is kind of unuqie for a DCOM. I'll check it out someday to see how good/bad it is but at the worst it could be what most DCOM's are at their worst: Meh, but not horrible.
Leave a Comment:
An Odd Sort of Failiure
The promos for Frenemies really overemphasized Bella Thorne and Zendaya's involvement, since it was an adaptation of a book I'd read and Alloy Entertainment can always be trusted to be loyal during their adaptations. I was interested to see how it would be bowdlerised and if the aforementioned Disney Celebrity Stars would be able to carry the project.
They did. It's everyone else that didn't.
Someone thought it would be a good idea to scrap the entire book and basically do an original story with some names intact. and then decided to turn a movie into a mini-anthology to show off some boring non-Disney stars.
The A Plot has a 'smart' protagonist (an informed ability only evidenced by his award from freaking NASA) with a perfect dog who loves him. A popular girl enacts one of the most basic plans in the universe (Pretend to like him to get him to do your homework) and is thwarted by said dog. It was a Cliche Storm, and not even the fun train-wreck kind. Everybody aside from the smart boys mom and Stefanie Scott cannot act to save their lives and the plot it self is boring due to being the most obvious thing committed to script.
The B Plot is the saving grace of the movie, Avalon and Halley run a webzine and are approached by editor of a magazine to run an empire, but she only wants one of them. Despite the cliche plot, it's fun to watch. All of the actors carry their characters well and each has a way with comedy. Avalon is wonderfully sassy and devious and her uptight rivals romance is cute and non-cliche. Zendaya plays a great shrinking violet with a nice sense of humor, Ms. St. Claire is evil in an understated yet hammy manner. Even Avalon and Halley's appearances in the A and B plots can be said to be those plot's saving graces.
The C Plot goes back the cliche, it's boring and has a nonsensical love dodecahedron built on top of it. Mary Mouser has a good English accent put can't do her alter-egos justice, in fact the only good actor in this plot is the butler. It manages to be worse by tying itself to the A plot.
If Frenemies had been reduced to the B plot only it would have been a good-if-still-inaccurate to the book movie, but in it's full product only 1/3rds of it is good. A non-solid 4/10.