424. The Bling Ring (2013)

Starring: Emma Watson, Katie Chang, Israel Broussard

Director: Sofia Coppola

Running Time: 90 mins

The Bling Ring is an American film about a group of teenagers who stage a series of break-ins and burglaries at celebrities’ houses in Hollywood after finding their addresses on the Internet.

Quite simply, this film really annoyed me. It did have what was quite an interesting concept and discussion point, but the characters were unbelievably frustrating to watch, and by the end, when they got their comeuppance, I couldn’t care less, in fact I wanted them to be punished for their idiocy.

I’ll start with the positives here. It’s quite an interesting idea, and very timely as well, to talk about nowadays’ celebrity culture, and the fact that young people can be so impressionable because of them. It also touched upon the dangers and potential exploitations of the Internet, which I actually found quite intriguing and relatively scary to see how easy it was for these teenagers to burgle celebrities’ houses.

What was not interesting was anything else. Mainly, the characters. The story is based around a group of extremely uninteresting, unintelligent and incredibly irritating teenagers, who are seemingly obsessed by fame. The fact that they are so obsessed with this was a point that I found myself constantly attacking them about throughout this movie, making me dislike them immensely.

By the end, when they were eventually jailed for their crimes, I was glad that it happened, because I really disliked them. It was said that this film wasn’t meant to judge or criticise these people for what they had done (as it’s a true story), but it was impossible to develop any sympathy for them whatsoever, making any emotional or deep connection with the film impossible.

Also, the fact that this is barely a comedy, or even a satire (which would have fitted well in these circumstances) meant it barely had any entertainment value. There was basically nothing that I enjoyed about this film, so because of that, I’ll give this a 4.6.