Girls let out their rebel yells.
Coincidentally, just as
Girls Rock!
, the new uplifting documentary about a rock 'n' roll camp for girls, hits Santa Fe, the one-time theatrical release of
Bratz: Girlz Really Rock
, an animated version of the popular Bratz Dolls, sweeps across the nation's theaters (it already played in Santa Fe, so you'll just have to wait until October for the DVD).***image1***
Both are about girls going to camps for the performing arts; both present role models for girls. Bratz purports to be about "friendship" but, of course, it's really about showing 7-year-old girls that it's good to be miniskirt-, fishnet- and feather-boa-wearing brats.
Girls Rock!
, on the other hand, is anathema to the Bratz/Britney Spears/Paris Hilton brainless, body-fatless, I-want-a-limitless-credit-card conspiracy. It's about the mental, emotional and spiritual growth of girls as they form bands, write lyrics and rock out.
Much of the non-practice time at the Portland, Ore.-based "Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls" is devoted to re-instilling the positive self-esteem that shit such as the Bratz has stripped away from little girls. One can almost hear Hillary Clinton's tearful lament, "I just don't want to see us fall backwards," redirected toward post-second-wave feminism's pop-slut "rebellion." The camp's stated goal is to "reclaim girl culture."
Girls Rock!
's two male directors, the Bay Area-based Arne Johnson and Shane King, handle this elegiac sentiment with mixed results. On the ***image2***not-so-well-done side, they present a series of ill-conceived collage animations that contrast heroines who emerge from a vat labeled "Feminism" with images of Spears and her ultra-sexualized ilk. The primary problem with these animations is that the heroines are shaped like Wonder Woman and are bedecked in spandex-which makes the juxtaposition less than illuminating.
The stronger reminders that a "post-gender" world has not yet been reached come by way of staggering and sad statistics. For instance, "the No. 1 wish among high school girls is to lose weight."
Besides these animations and posted statistics, though, much of
Girls Rock!
is less didactic and more fly-on-the-wall documentary, focusing on four little rock stars in training. Unfortunately, these scenes, too, are only partially successful.
Girls Rock!
has some fairly interesting characters, charming (and occasionally tolerable) performance scenes and a touching narrative arc that shows how the camp can increase self-esteem. But endless squabbling between the girls (and a background of bourgeois privilege) leaves it unable to captivate and inspire like other recent kid documentaries such as
Spellbound
,
War Dance
and
Mad Hot Ballroom
.
Still, parents looking for a movie they can attend with their kids could do much, much worse-
Bratz: Girlz Really Rock
, for instance.
