I have never had much luck keeping a private journal. I can’t seem to
motivate myself much when I’m writing only for myself, and it’s a little
nerve-wracking to be writing down things you specifically don’t want
anyone else to read, because what would happen if they did? In Disney
Channel original movie Read It and Weep, teen scribe Jamie Bartlett is about to find out.
Jamie
(Kay Panabaker) is a quiet, geeky girl who totes her tablet computer
with her everywhere and spends all her free time scribbling down her
frustrations about the unfair world of high school. Except in her
journal, which features fictionalized versions of everyone in the
school, the geeks triumph and the jerks are humiliated. It’s a great
release for her, but she is appalled when she accidentally e-mails it to
her friend instead of the essay she intended to enter in the school’s
contest. After it wins, she is praised as a biting satirist and given a
book deal that catapults her to writing fame. But will her sudden
stardom turn her into the kind of monster she derided? And how will her
classmates react when they realize the characters were modeled after
them?
This is pretty much your typical teen flick about an
awkward kid who becomes popular, loses sight of what’s important and
eventually remembers. Jamie is likable, albeit overdramatic, but then
most of the characters here come across as a bit cheesy and
over-the-top. Panabaker’s older sister Danielle plays Is, Jamie’s
fictional alter-ego who begins to take over her life. Their
confrontations are fun to watch, especially when they occur in front of
other people, who, of course, can only see and hear Jamie. Is basically
becomes the devil on Jamie’s shoulder, continually urging her to ignore
her good impulses and stick with self-involvement and false friends like
catty queen bee Sawyer (Allison Scagliotti) and guileless but
lunkheaded dreamboat Marco (Chad Broskey).
Other key characters
include Jamie’s best buddies, a trio of outsiders who have stuck
together for years. Offbeat artist Harmony (Alexandra Krosney), animal
rights activist Lindsay (Marquise Brown) and shy Connor (Jason Dolley),
who is secretly in love with Jamie, eat lunch together and work at the
struggling pizza parlor owned by Jamie’s parents. Both of them are kind
and supportive, with her mom (Connie Young) a bundle of bubbly energy
and her dad (Tom Virtue) a goofy dreamer with a bad habit of tainting
his pizzas with disgusting experimental toppings like prunes and liver
and onions. By contrast, Jamie’s brother Lenny (Nick Whitaker) is surly
and argumentative, but that’s largely because he has a dream of his own
that is not being nurtured.
I don’t know the current Disney
channel line-up well enough to be familiar with the actors here, several
of whom I gather are veterans of other tween Disney projects. I
recognized only Krosney, and it wasn’t until I consulted with IMDb that I
realized it was because she played aggressive young Other Ellie in the
season five LOST episode Jughead. The acting all around is
acceptable but corny, with most characters constantly displaying
exaggerated expressions. The most understated performance probably comes
from the instantly sympathetic Dolley.
The movie has a faux-hip
vibe to it that makes it rather grating at times. Nowhere is that more
apparent than in the constant shots of the journal itself, in which no
two words are the same size and different colors and fonts, along with
snarky doodles, scream out that this alleged work of genius is more
style than substance. The speed with which it all happens is absurd,
too; she seems to go from having excerpts of her journal in the school
paper to full-blown published book in a matter of days. Additionally,
most of the dialogue has the unmistakable whiff of writers who think
they are being trendy and clever but aren’t.
Still, while the
characters never felt fully real to me, the main quartet is likable
enough to root for, and Jamie’s parents are quite endearing for all
their quirkiness. Like most contemporary Disney channel original movies,
Read It and Weep does not transcend the narrow confines of its genre, but it’s reasonably entertaining for an hour and a half.
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