552. The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003)

Starring: Hilary Duff, Adam Lamberg, Clayton Snyder

Director: Jim Fall

Running Time: 94 mins

The Lizzie McGuire Movie is an American film, based on the TV series, about the young teenage girl who, while on a school trip to Rome after her middle school graduation, becomes wrapped up in the dream romance of any teenage girl.

Well, if you hated the series (like I did after watching one episode), you’re really going to hate this. Not only does it carry over some of the most annoying features from the TV programme, but it blows absolutely everything way out of proportion, making it an annoyingly cheesy and in-your-face kids’ comedy.

I’m sure that fans of the series won’t be too disappointed by this, but it would seem to me that rather than focussing a lot more on the character of Lizzie McGuire, this film just goes nuts with its $17m budget and creates an idiotic romance story that ends up just being a display of eye candy rather than any look at Lizzie as the TV show did.

Speaking of the characters, though, there is one positive I can draw from this film. Although Lizzie, all her friends and relatives were horribly irritating, their school teacher, a strict but silly woman, was actually quite a laugh to watch, which gave me a nice break from the horror of the rest of this film.

One of the things that I despise most about this is how generically Disney it is. I usually try to cope with the rom-com genre, and the 8 year old girl Disney genre, but when the two are put together, it’s just unbearable to watch, which makes it not just irritating, but often quite a painful viewing.

Also, although it’s a little specific, the accents were appalling. Ranging from Super Mario to Marcello Mastroianni, none of the Italian accents done in this film were at all convincing, and although it is definitely a minor note, I have to say that it was a little thing that just got under my skin, and eventually made me lose patience with this film.

Finally, the soundtrack. Again, Disney can sometimes do a decent soundtrack, but this film sounds like they picked two songs from Now That’s What I Call Music 2002 and played them again and again and again and again, which was probably the tip of the iceberg for me, as it amplified the cheesiness and the annoyance of this film to such an extent that I’m going to give it a 3.5.