Full disclosure; this is not the first time Popcorn From Outer Space was a thing. Many, many years ago Popcorn From Outer Space was a Tumblr blog with much the same premise; let's watch films, mostly bad ones, and talk about them. But I did it differently back then - they we're micro blog posts no longer than a paragraph and I also covered good films like Donnie Darko, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and The Beach... probably... I can't really remember... anyway in the course of running that blog I used to ask my followers what kind of films really bought their piss to a boil and randomly one of the recommendations from a follower found it's way into my Facebook memories this week and I decided it was a sign and went with it.
Wild Child, a 2008 teen comedy about spoiled, entitled Malibu Princess; Poppy (Emma Roberts) who is sent to boarding school in England after pissing off her Dad for the last time and immediately gets on the wrong side of all the students, teachers, and Harriet (Georgia King) the Head Girl. However Poppy suddenly garners sympathy from her room mates when they discover she is homesick and immediately decide that to get her out, she needs to get expelled and almost instantly come round to becoming her team mates in helping her achieve that... You know, despite disliking her literally right up until that point. Deciding that the best way to do that is to "snog" the son of the Head Mistress; Freddie (Alex Pettyfer), they hatch a plan to snag him at the big interschool dance which almost goes according to plan until the pair are interrupted by the Head Girls sidekicks. Realising she might have feelings for Freddie, Poppy focuses her efforts on playing that really English sport Lacrosse (do they play that at Boarding School? I thought it was all Rugby and Netball?) in order to secure a trip to Freddie's boarding school and after making the Semi-Finals she finally snags a big date with him and admits her feelings, but it all goes wrong when she gets back to the school and discovers somebody has printed off and reworded her snotty emails to her American friends back home, upsetting her new friends and ruining her chance with Freddie. And after accidentally starting a fire in the kitchen, Poppy looks to face being expelled from the school. But it transpires Harriett was the one who re-started the fire after Poppy thought she had put it out and left and after avoiding getting expelled, and the reworded emails put to right, Poppy goes on to help her team with the Lacrosse championship and, presumably hooks up with Freddie.
I have to tread really carefully here because I am really not the target demographic for this movie... I don't think I could be furthest from the opposite of the target demographic for this movie... and I really risk destroying what little credibility I have left as a movie fan and a person but... I... didn't hate this? Ok fine, the dancing scenes and the shopping scene and the soundtrack did nothing for me, and I cannot relate at all to most of everybody in this movie. I am not posh. I did not go to Boarding School. I am not a young teenage girl... but despite not being a young teenage girl I can at least empathize with Poppy's emotional position... mostly... and how she responds to the development of the situation. Her character starts off unlikeable, detestable, annoying but as the events of the movie develop she becomes more likeable, respectable, and empathizable... is that a word? Did I just make that up?... and at the beginning of the movie I thought "Ok, win me over." and ultimately by the end of the film where she is on the cusp of being expelled, she did.
Georgia King shines in this movie. She is outstanding. An absolute joy to watch. She does a fantastic job of being the snotty, posh, stuck up Head Girl, bully, and lead villain of the movie and puts in a brilliant performance. Every scene she is in she commands your attention and doesn't just act out her role, she is her role. By far and away she blew everyone else out of the water. Some of the other girls in the film only really peaked at a passable performance, and most of the leads; Emma Stone as Poppy, Alex Pettyfer as Freddie, and the four room mates all put in good performances, but Georgia King was head and shoulders above the rest of them. Absolutely perfect.
But as good as the individual performances were (and a special mention to Jason Watkins who was brilliant as the goofy language teacher and screenshot gold) and as enjoyable as the film was, for the most part, I felt the plot was a little rushed and meandering. The girls just decide almost at the blink of an eye that actually they like Poppy, and then decide immediately that she must get expelled. The first half of the film builds up to the dance and finally completing the plan only for it to then fail and the second half quickly switches to exploring Poppy's character developing and realising she actually doesn't want to get expelled? It felt rushed and a little hasty and like it was being cobbled together as it was written, first draft without applying any editing, development or polish to key parts. It all plays out eventually to a swift conclusion but it felt like it just drifted apart around the middle to then piece itself back together to draw to a close. And also, for a film calling itself Wild Child, it's really very vanilla. There's nothing here that was inserted for shock value to drive that point home, or nothing that really paints Poppy as a extraverted, out of control destructive individual, you know; a wild child, with the worst thing that she does to try and get expelled being a prank to turn the Swimming Pool red. It doesn't push any boundaries playing it very safe and only gets as wild as it might be to walk on the wrong side of the road and go "ooooh look at me, I'm walking on the wrong side of the road" before getting out of the way in case you get hit by a car.
And it has to be said that the moralistic tale of the story; 'rebellious teen discovers that they need to settle down because they are just hurting the people they care out', crossed with the girl meets boy underlying sub-plot has been so heavily recycled at this point that it becomes very predictable. It was so obvious going into it that Poppy would evidently develop feelings for Freddie which would naturally piss off the 'other girl'. There's nothing fresh about the film in this department and if you've seen one of these films you've pretty much seen all of them.
As aforementioned, I'm probably not this films target audience me... but I was mega impressed with Georgia King (if I hadn't made that clear) and despite being a mostly vanilla teen comedy with an entirely predictable, script by numbers plot hampered by some hastily played out plot development, the movie was at least enjoyable enough that I didn't feel like I just wasted 1 hour and 31 minutes of my life. Will I go back to it again? You know what, maybe just for Georgina King... it depends what else she's been in. Really strong, just almost bordering on a 3, 2 out of 5.
