Steve D
Really bad update that does nothing remotely as well as the original.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
10/05/23
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Audience Member
Seemingly another of those vanity projects whereas the story isn't primary nor secondary focus, only the leading stars define what the film is, and their charm fails against their thin communicative storytelling which turned out blandly empty with zero interests to the point it would be surprising if its target audience actually find some sort of enjoyment. (D)
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/17/23
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Audience Member
Hilary and Haylie Duff go on a hunt to find the truth to their company of beauty. The characters the Duff girls play are rich socialites to bid poor and brings out the best in them with becoming closer to the people in the lower class to them when they were rich socialites and belonging to a new world they did not grow up in.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/20/23
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Audience Member
Not a good movie to watch
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
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Audience Member
Even the gr8 director Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl) can't save this hot mess
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
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Audience Member
When I tell people that I watch any type of film, I really do mean it. Though I am a guy, I'm certainly not above watching chick flicks. However, that being said, chick flicks have also given me some of the worst film-watching experiences I've ever had that still scar me years after watching them. Sometimes I even shudder as I recall the experiences of watching them.
I know there are female viewers that try to say that these films are escapist entertainment, much like what us guys watch when it comes to action films or gross out comedies, but even the stupidest of those films still have some level of respect for their viewers, even if it is rather minimal at times. With a film like Material Girls, it has no respect for its viewers. It views its audience as a bunch of prissy, whiny, stupid, glamor-obsessed girls with roughly the same brain cell count as a cardboard box, while throwing in a half-assed moral message that means nothing in the end.
It's a film that thinks if it sticks popular (At the time, of course) preteen icons for girls into a film, fashion, annoying pop music, romantic cliches so lazy you'll want to vomit, pop culture references, and a gamut of other things that plague chick flicks, that it can just get away with being a piece of shit because of its "target audience" which is quite shameful. Oh no, Material Girls, I'm not letting you get away.
Sisters Tanzie and Ava (Real-life sisters, Hilary and Haylie Duff) are two rich girls who spend all their time partying and shopping, as they inherited their late father's cosmetics company, even though they do nothing to help run it. They are simply riding on the cash flow from the company.
But, Tanzie still dearly misses her father, even watching an old TiVo recording of him promoting his cosmetics every now and then and refusing to erase it, despite pressures from her sister to do so.
But one day, their lives are turned upside down when a tabloid program claims that the company's cosmetic products cause terrible skin conditions, threatening to destroy the company, causing their assets to be frozen, having an angry mob after them, and losing all of their so-called "friends" in the process.
While at home in their mansion, with an angry mob outside their gates, a fire is accidentally started, burning down their mansion and forcing them to stay with their maid, since their credit cards are no longer active and they can't stay anywhere else. They are now homeless, broke, jobless, and completely clueless as they have no idea how the outside works from their insular rich bubble of a world.
But, there is a ray of hope for the girls when a rival cosmetics company offers to buy their company for several million dollars. But, Tanzie refuses the deal, and decides to start an investigation into what is really going on at their company since she believes that they were framed, resulting in a series of supposed-to-be-funny shenanigans along the way as they investigate.
I do enjoy a good comedy about high society or takedowns of rich people (Including celebrities), but Material Girls is horribly dissatisfying in its storytelling. Even by the most minimum standards of chick flicks, this storyline is vacant and hollow, doing only the bare minimum to have a story and one-note characters so that it can be considered a film. There was absolutely no effort or care put into the storyline. This is easily one of the most lazily-written films I've ever seen. The average viewer, even if they possess no writing abilities of any sort, could write a script that would look Oscar-worthy in comparison to this script.
The two lead characters are nothing but two spoiled, bratty bitches, while the Tanzie character only has the minute elements of being a semi good girl sort of character who is also slightly smarter than her very dim-witted sister, Ava. I never rooted for them and I never cared, even when their characters seemed to become smarter and learned how to be semi-normal people.
Even with cast members like Anjelica Huston and Brent Spiner (Who also appeared in another horrible comedy, The Master Of Disguise. Were things really so bad after they stopped making Star Trek films for awhile?), the script does absolutely nothing with them, outside of simple caricatures, being possible lame villains, or red herrings in the story's abominable insertion of mystery elements that makes even the most generic of mystery films look masterful by comparison.
It also has absolutely nothing insightful to say about rich people, high society, regular life, clearing one's name from a false accusation, or anything all together. It's all about following two air-headed tarts who aren't even funny or interesting air-headed tarts (I should have Romy And Michele's High School Reunion again instead. Now that was a funny film about air-headed tarts).
The acting is horrible across the board. As much as I disliked A Cinderella Story, in which Hilary Duff was the lead star, I felt that she gave a good performance in that film and showed signs of being far more capable than what that film would lead the viewer to believe. Unfortunately, that aura is definitely not present in this film. Here, Hilary Duff is just annoying, though at least she's more tolerable than her sister. I'm not sure what sort of acting abilities Haylie Duff might possess, but she was beyond bad in this film. Together, they're both just annoying tarts that began to grate on my nerves within less than two minutes of watching this abomination.
Anjelica Huston is shamefully wasted and her presence is practically nonexistent, though she is probably the best actress of the bunch by doing another bitchy sort of performance, which was mildly entertaining at times. No other cast members are worth noting, other than expressing sadness over seeing the decline of Brent Spiner's career.
Entertainment? What entertainment? This film is so hollow and vacant, that even viewers with the most minimum standards for chick flicks will be hard-pressed to find anything of value in this film. It has only the most shallow elements of storytelling, characters so one-dimensional they are one step away from just being cardboard cutouts, horrible and unfunny jokes, and horrible acting. There is nothing to derive from this film other than brief moments of Anjelica Huston's performance which can be momentarily entertaining to watch.
Humor? Are you fucking kidding me? For comedies I usually try to have an extra paragraph to dedicate to humor, but there is not one positive thing that I can say about the humor. There are no funny parts.
Material Girls is a horrible film that has only a single redeeming quality thanks only to Anjelica Huston's performance. Other than her, there is nothing of value to find, even if you have even the most shallow of standards for this type of film. Avoid it at all costs if you want to keep your sanity intact.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/26/23
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