The scourge of Britney

Satanic. That is the word that comes to mind when analyzing the pure horror that is Crossroads, Britney Spears’ film debut. Evil in its most concentrated form, nasty enough to make a charging buffalo stop in its tracks and retch … totally satanic.

Showgirls satanic.

While it’s hard to hate Britney Spears, especially if you are a drooling, sad excuse for a human male like myself, it is not hard to hate her movie. Oh, it is not hard at all.

I’ll say this for the film: It starts on a high note. While it’s targeted at young girls, it’s the gorilla males who will emit devilish laughs when Britney shows up in pink underwear, dancing on her bed to a Madonna tune, bathing your retinas via a giant movie screen. It was during this blessed sequence that I found myself thinking, “Gee … maybe this film is going to be OK! I can take 90 minutes of this!” Then … Britney speaks.

As for her acting, she’s no Mandy Moore. Her character hails from Georgia, and she lets you know this by dropping four or five “y’alls” during the course of the film. As for her singing, she may have rocked when she was a little kid on Star Search, but she’s graduated to talk-singing, throwing in one of those occasional growl things to distinguish herself. If the script calls for tears, she looks down, and then looks up, with tears having magically appeared on her cheeks. She does work up some snot during one sobbing session, so I guess that qualifies as ballsy.

The funny thing about this film is that it’s trying to preach wholesomeness to young girls. Considering the movie’s contents of premarital sex, date rape, miscarriages and drinking, wholesomeness just doesn’t come to mind. It’s like a film trying to preach that alcohol is evil, and then having its main protagonist win $10 million at the International Vodka Chugging Tournament.

This is a road trip movie, with three female high school graduates, including Britney, trekking to Los Angeles in hopes of finding themselves. In Britney’s case, she just wants to get laid by the ornery bastard who’s driving them, a virtual stranger— Britney Spears: Role Model! This is one of those movies that portrays Los Angeles as the Promised Land, an annoying trait considering that Los Angeles is basically the stanky armpit of the West.

How pathetic is this film? This is a movie that chooses to solve the problem of a teen girl’s semi-controversial pregnancy (her condition is the result of date rape) by dropping her down a flight of stairs and giving her a miscarriage. There you have it—a nice, tidy, completely insulting solution to a problem that might be facing some of the women who are sitting down to watch this film. This is irresponsible, reckless filmmaking.

During a particularly painful hospital scene, I was working up to a teeth-grinding, hair-pulling frenzy. I was on the verge of turning to the people next to me and beckoning them to make it stop, when a toddler in the back of the theater who obviously had enough decided to throw a massive fit, peppered with screams of “No, no, no!” The parents had to run the child out of the theater, prompting me to conclude that this had to be one of the smartest tykes in the world! I considered my own tantrum, deciding against it when I realized it would’ve resulted in a soda-pop bath.

During the film’s much-welcomed finale, Britney sings a song that states she is not a girl and not yet a woman. That’s right, Britney. According to this film, you’re just a stupid whore!