2.5 stars out of 5
I first saw Elle Fanning in 2006’s I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With. Next, I singled out her strong performance in my review of Super 8 in 2011, and then in Trumbo (2015) I noticed she was growing up. I figured the first time I’d see her as the lead in a film would be Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to see that. So instead I’m stuck with Teen Spirit.
It almost works. The set-up is compelling enough: Fanning is Violet, a 17-year-old on the Isle of Wight who balances working the family farm with her Polish single mother, waiting tables and washing dishes at a sad restaurant, and being a regular teen at the local high school. But Violet — she loves to sing. In her bedroom, she mimes and writhes to No Doubt. Violet sneaks off at night to sing at an (equally sad) bar. And when she sees that an American Idol-type audition is coming to the island, her interest is piqued.
Unfortunately, the story can’t rise above its Cinderella clichés. Violet meets a sweet old Russian drunk who was actually a world-class opera singer, huh! He help but she must work! Vlad is Mr. Miyagi and Mickey though he looks like Artie Lange. Plus, you wouldn’t believe it but there’s some dirty business behind the scenes of the reality competition.
Writer/director Max Minghella is the son of top director Anthony Minghella, and the script seems to honor the Isle of Wight immigrant community that his dad grew up in. But Max does not yet have his father’s skill, and the screenplay definitely could’ve used a strong revision. The filmmakers brought in a top composer/producer, Marius de Vries, to handle the music, and I did like the natural way the soundtrack was often whatever was playing in Violet’s earbuds. However, the newly written songs are auto-tuned pop garbage; I kept waiting for the film to point out the absurdity that a so-called “singing contest” was based on such by-the-numbers pap. Nope, that’s not what this story is about. And, adding insult to injury, there’s also the worst imaginable cover ever of “Teenage Kicks.”
Kudos to Elle Fanning; she tries. I guess this isn’t her first role with a British accent (a “posh” one this time) and it’s believable, but she also has to speak a little Polish. And yet the casting of Rebecca Hall as the slimy TV producer only reminded me that Hall, formerly Vicky in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is also in A Rainy Day in New York, which is likely a decidedly better film than this one.
Jack Silbert, curator