A mother and her daughter confront the intimidation of teen peer pressure and the emotionally brutalizing social rituals of high school.
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Wow! Such a good movie.
Instant Favorite.
How sad is this?
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
I really like this movie because it shows the true nature of today's society in schools. Fortunately I never let girls get to me like that in high school. When I saw girls like Nikki and Stacey I ran the other direction. For those who are teenagers watching this movie, please know that it's real stuff and the struggle is real for a lot of children in our country. Usually stuff like this happens because girls think they are better than everyone else, or are jealous for one's looks, IQ, grades, friendship status....the list goes on.
Vanessa (Alexa PenaVega) is poor, straight A student and a great soccer player. She's part of the popular crowd with mean girl Nikki and her best friend rich girl Stacey (Leah Pipes). Stacey likes Tony and Vanessa tries to talk up Stacey to him but he likes Vanessa instead. Nikki takes the opportunity to start bullying Vanessa with the rest of the class. The only person on her side is class outcast Emily. Her mother Barbara, who works for Stacey's mother Denise Larson, is helpless and lost.This is a gut-wrenching teen melodrama. There are a couple of turns in the last act that I don't really like. Alexa PenaVega makes this better-than-most teen lesson movie. She has great vulnerability. Stacey seems to be an interesting complicated character. She's set up for some redemption which the movie turns 180 in the end. Emily is the magical negro character. The adults are mostly clueless. PenaVega is able to make this better than the material.
Teenage high school student Vanessa is friends with Stacey but when Vanessa asks out a boy Stacey has her eye on the friendship ends . Worse it leads to a bullying campaign where Stacey and her friends makes Vanessa's life an absolute living hell that drives Vanessa to the brink of suicide To a degree this is a fairly effective TVM centering around the misery that bullying brings and you really do feel sympathy for Vanessa's plight as she finds herself friendless as Stacey and her gang turn on her . There is a slight problem and that is director Tom Mcloughlin more interested in adopting an MTV directing style rather than developing the story more There's another slight fly in the ointment and that's the climax where Vanessa and Stacey make their peace only for Vanessa to realise Stacey is not to be trusted . Considering everything Vanessa has gone through is it likely that anyone would want to befriend Stacey again after all she's done . It's not helped by the cheesy scene Vanessa's mom mouthing " I'm so proud of you " Having said that it's a TVM made for a certain market and if the production team made it a bit more gritty then the audience might have found it too heavy to watch and the positive comments on this page indicates that ODD GIRL OUT has succeeded in showing what a terrible thing bullying is
The very overrated 2004 flick "Mean Girls" was praised by critics for its "biting" and "accurate" portrayal of clique-y high school girls. Please, "Mean Girls" is so tame, so glossy it should have been called "'Valley Girl' with PMS". Just a year after "Mean Girls"'s release, Lifetime released "Odd Girl Out", a terrifying tragic tale of adolescent cruelty. Based on Rachel Simmons's nonfiction book of the same name, "Odd Girl Out" is a stylized but painfully realistic look at how teenage girls will attack each other not with four-letter words or fists, but with rumors, dirty looks, and any form of underhanded bullying. "Odd Girl Out" reveals the 21st century's newest form of torment: cyber-bullying.Our protagonist Vanessa (Alexa Vega, "Spy Kids") is an A-student comfortably situated in her popular clique of friends. When fair weather friend Niki (played by appropriately unattractive Elizabeth Rice) becomes jealous of Vanessa's social standing, she decides to take her down a peg by turning Vanessa's shallow best friend Stacy (Leah Pipes) against her and spreading hateful rumors and gossip. Gossip turns into thinly veiled insults ("That tray looks really heavy," one girl sneers at Vanessa during lunch), which in turn become relentless abuse (a web site dedicated to insulting Vanessa is put up). Vanessa tries her best to ignore this undeserved mistreatment, but the emotional pain becomes too much for her to bear. Vanessa's self-esteem and life begin to crumble, and her mother (Lisa Vidal) desperately struggles to help her anguished daughter. As someone who was picked on (albeit not as badly) in middle school, I must say this movie is right on the mark. This is really how middle school girls behave: they'll simply choose their victim and attack at random. No rhyme, no reason, they are driven by their own self-absorption and insecurities. I'll admit it, "Odd Girl Out" made me cry for myself, for poor Vanessa, and anyone else who was victimized at that age. Vega is astonishingly good as Vanessa, who is forced to go through pure hell scene after scene. You really see the desperation and loneliness reflected in her sad brown eyes. Vidal is also in fine form as Vanessa's loving but somewhat clueless mom. Rice, Pipes, and Alecia Moore are realistic as the pack of former friends who torture Vanessa. Some people complain that "Odd Girl Out" plays too much like a horror movie. Anyone who agrees with that sentiment obviously never attended public middle school.