Title: Geek Charming
Starring: Sarah Hyland, Matt Prokop, Jordan Nichols, and Vanessa Morgan.
Director: Jeffrey Hornaday
Release Date: 11 November 2011
Geek Charming is a movie about high school, so of course it's going to follow the standard plot line of an unpopular boy/girl (usually boy) becoming friends with / falling in love with a popular boy/girl (usually girl). Josh Rosen (Prokop) needs to make a documentary movie for the upcoming film festival. He chooses to make the film an expose on what it means to be popular. Thus, Dylan Schoenfield (Hyland), the most popular girl in school becomes his subject.
It seems that Rosen chose his star well. Dylan has the typical popular girl attitude.
"People know I care" by correcting and saving fashion victims. This will help get her the title Blossom Queen
Popular people shouldn't have to "share the same air" as geeks. Popular people can only hang out with other popular people because cats don't hang with dogs (geeks).
She drops her purse into a shallow mall fountain and cries for help because she is incapable of getting it for herself. She acts like she's a damsel in distress in need of saving. But seriously . . . it's just a purse and its just a fountain -- you're not going to die.
Popularity isn't easy. It's like being a queen or first lady. You have to live up to extreme, unattainable standards of beauty. You have to be kind and compassionate (or at least fake it). You must help people -- again, only fashion victims for her. You have to be a good influence on others.
Popularity is contagious. Dylan's friend are only popular because she is. Her popularity saves them.
Popular kids must hang out with other populars and everyone should stay in their own cliques to prevent "misunderstandings"
Breakfast Club anyone??? . . . or almost any other John Hughes movie . . .
In other words, from the very beginning, Dylan is a D-I-V-A, diva. She may hate being called that, but if the tiara fits . . . wear it. For example, when asked what she wants to do after school, she says yoga and shopping (which is good for the economy). When asked about the future, all she can come up with is becoming Blossom Queen. (you find out that this desire is tied to her dead mother, but she needs a better goal all the same . . . but that's just me talking).
At first, the project goes just how Josh imagined it would -- Dylan is silly and superficial, and just the way he imagined she would be. As they hang out to finish the movie, they start hanging out with one another because they want to -- a MAJOR mistake in the world of high school because hanging out with the "wrong" clique gets you excommunicated from your former circle of friends so you have no one. The apparent truth is just that you cannot break through clique boundaries by getting a "fake-over" makeover.
Josh is no longer Film Club President.
Dylan no longer has a covered seat on the ramp -- the peak of popularity.
The closer Dylan and Josh get, however, the more Josh's "artistic vision" changes because his understanding of the truth about Dylan and popularity changes. After all, the documentary is about truth which is very challenging to find and the truth is that Dylan is a real person, not some plastic, popular, foreign entity to be stared and marveled at from a distance.
Dylan wins burping contests
Dylan wears contacts/glasses
Dylan is vulnerable and uncertain at times, especially when talking about her mom.
Dylan cares about her grades.
In other words, Dylan is just a regular person like anyone else. That in mind, Josh's new goal is to discover the "real story" about Dylan; not the "cover story" she pretends she is. The problem is that he never told Dylan about the change, so of course she is angry.
She didn't want anyone to know the "real" Dylan because her real self is "humiliating." After all, she spent both middle school and high school to get rid of herself and replace it with a new perfect version of herself.
After the film debuts, Dylan has no choice but to hide. Josh has exposed the real Dylan and she can't make that disappear. She is forced, then, to become a "real," more soft girl. And in doing so, Dylan's view of popularity changes. Popularity becomes
Not having everyone know who you are.
Not what you're wearing.
Not winning Blossom Queen
Having real friends who like you for you.
Not friends who will ditch you for a better offer or who will stop being your friends because you don't have a boyfriend / date to the big dance.
Real friends you can count on no matter what and who will share life with you.
Not about being popular or a geek; it'as about hanging out with the people who make you happy.
So yeah.
Typical high school movie (thank you Disney for your lack of originality in this film), but the audience knows that before watching the film. It shouldn't be any surprise then. If you want to watch a sappy, high school, forbidden love sort of thing, by all means watch it. If not, don't bother. It'll just annoy you.
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