Standing Ovation

Here it is, folks. After about seven and a half months of waiting, the worst film of 2010 has arrived. Just skip this one movie, and you should be safe the rest of the year. Granted, 2010 is far from over, but it's hard to imagine anything coming close to what writer-director Stewart Raffill (1988's Mac and Me) is passing off as entertainment.

The concept is nothing new, but Standing Ovation is easily the most dimwitted and amateurish example of it I've seen in many a moon. Two teenage girl singing groups are competing in a music video contest for a grand prize of a million dollars and a recording contract. Naturally, there's a "mean group" and a "good group". The "mean" girls are The Wiggies, so called because their father owns a wig factory. They're rich, they're snobby, and they frequently cheat to win. The "good" girls are called The Five Ovations. We're supposed to like them, because they're plucky, poor, and have a lot of spirit. To be honest, I didn't like either one. They both sing the most generic-sounding pop music imaginable, and the videos that they enter into the competition look like the kind of home-made music videos they hand out at theme parks. There's an obnoxious little girl who calls herself Alanna Wannabe (Alanna Palombo), who's always trying to break into both of the singing groups. She's notable only for being the single most annoying child performance in a movie in a very long time.

The leader of the Ovations is a down on her luck girl named Brittany (Kayla Jackson). She lives with her Irish grandfather (P Brendan Mulvey) who has a gambling problem. Here we get the first of many examples of the confused morality of this movie. Gambling is frowned upon, as it has driven Brittany's family into near-bankruptcy. And yet, when the girl needs money to help her enter the competition, she has grandpa bet on a long-shot horse. (The horse wins, of course.) The Ovations enter the contest with the help of some nice boys at their middle school, and make a video, which of course is sabotaged by the evil Wiggies. They still get in, though, and get to go to the finals in New York City. Actually, we just see some stock footage of Times Square, then it cuts to the contest itself. The movie uses the exact same street footage every time the girls are supposed to be in New York.

There's a confusing subplot concerning a girl named Joei Batalucci (Joei DeCarlo), who becomes the manager of The Five Ovations. She's a tough-talking preteen girl who's seeking revenge on a guy who stole money from her family years ago, which led to her family going straight to the poorhouse. She thinks she's got a lead on the guy who stole the money, so she follows Brittany and her friends around, grilling local thugs and gangsters for information. She does this by threatening the various thugs with snakes, scorpions, electric eels, and other little critters that she keeps in her backpack at all times. I have no idea what such a plot is doing in a family film about a singing competition, or what it has to do with everything else in the movie. The climax sloppily ties the contest, the search for the guy who stole the money, and Brittany's long-lost father who walked out years ago together in a way that has to be seen to be believed.

Standing Ovation is such a mess, it constantly seems to be jumping around from scene to scene, with little concern for plot structure or coherency. It's not a musical, as the girls only sing when they're on stage. And yet, there's a curious scene where the mean Wiggie girls are at a restaurant with their father, and they suddenly break into a horrible song about good manners for absolutely no reason. The performances are also terrible. There's not a single actor who can create a believable emotion, or bring a human quality to their characters. I'm not just talking about the kids, by the way. The adults are just as bad, if not worse. But of course, the adults are mainly playing stereotypes here. The kids are stuck playing bland and shrill "tween" cliches with no personality whatsoever.

As has often been the case with some recent bad movies, Standing Ovation manages to review itself in its own dialogue better than I ever could. That would be the most repeated line that Brittany's grandpa says - "Dumb is dumb, and there ain't nothing dumber". How a movie with the budget of a made for TV film, and acting that wouldn't cut it in a community theater production, wound up on the big screen, I don't know. It holds no distinction, other than being the absolute worst movie of the year.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

2 comments