Pop Star Pictures

Crossroads

Romeo Must Die

Well ho ho ho and happy holidays, dear readers! This week I watched and reviewed my 599th and 600th movies, so I hope you’re ready for a semi-phoned-in, sorta-satisfying, somewhat-half-assed-600-movies extravaganza! It feels like I just watched my 499th and 500th films, but I’ve also lived many lives and have clearly watched many movies since then. This heavy, hectic year flew right on by, so I hope you’ll understand if I truncate this week’s double feature festivities to spend some time with my family, so I can inflict movie-watching on them as well. For my 600th movies, I wanted to do something that spoke to my silly, girly sensibilities, and watch a set of films that occupy that special space between earnest and outlandish. So let’s ring in 600 films on this blog with a round of movies that were meant to make their lead pop stars shine even brighter—with varying results. Movies about pop stars are seldom that uplifting, but movies that star pop stars are fascinating to this critic.

Up first is a classic chick flick that I’ve been needing to see for quite some time, this is Tamra Davis’ 2002 film Crossroads. At the turn of the most recent century, you couldn’t find a bigger star than Britney Spears. The boy bands and new age brat packs had their adoring fans, too—this may have been the best era to be a fan of anyone—but the most beloved and talked-about celebrity was a young singer from Louisiana named Britney. The Princess of Pop’s image and legacy have been discussed and dissected to the point where even debating her harmless dance videos on Instagram would be cruel, but there’s not much else I need to say about her beyond the fact that she’s an icon. By the year 2000, she’d already made multiple, timeless hits, she was on tour, and had a very public relationship with Justin Timberlake—so it only makes sense that her team decided a film career would be next. This is just the way things go, for some reason: you gain traction in the entertainment industry so now you have to try every single profitable avenue. Apparently, the premise for Crossroads was dreamed up by Britney herself, with a script later developed by Shonda Rhimes, and given both of those random facts, and the fact that this film was so critically-panned (though it’s been recently reevaluated), I cannot stress how this movie was so much better than I’d anticipated. Plus, when I saw Justin Long’s name on the credits, I was immediately put at ease. The film opens on three ten-year-old girls who live in Georgia named Mimi (Taryn Manning), Kit (Zoë Saldaña), and Lucy (Spears [the young Lucy is actually played by her little sister and future-snake Jamie Lynn Spears.]) The three besties dig a hole in the ground and bury a box full of their dreams, with the promise to return on graduation night at midnight to retrieve it. The plan was to be BFFs, but that didn’t quite pan out. Eight years later, Lucy is the naive but ambitious valedictorian—who is overprotected by her father Dan Aykroyd—Kit is a popular mean girl who is engaged to her high school sweetheart, and Mimi is the biggest outcast, as she shows up to graduation about 5 months pregnant. (This should’ve been the clue that this came from the twisted mind of Shonda Rhimes.) At their graduation dance—which is a thing, apparently—Mimi tries to convince Kit and Lucy to go dig up the dream box and complete their childhood pact, but she doesn’t get an immediate response. But when Kit hears her friend talking shit about her soon-to-be-fiance who is off at college, and Lucy unsuccessfully attempts to lose her virginity with her lab partner (Justin Long), all three girls end up at the dig-spot at midnight. Kit’s wish was to be a bride, Lucy’s wish was to once again see the mom who abandoned her, and Mimi’s wish was to see the world and specifically, put her feet in the Pacific Ocean. One sentimental convo leads to the three of them taking a cross-country road trip to Los Angeles, where Mimi plans to audition for a record company, Kit plans to confront her fiancé at UCLA, and Lucy hopes to find her mom along the way. The three friends-turned-strangers-turned-friends again hitch a ride with a new stranger/friend named Ben (Anson Mount): a convertible driving, tattooed musician who quickly falls for Lucy. There are too many hijinks and hare-brained schemes for me to name, but it hit all of the highs and lows of a road trip movie that you’d want and expect. It’s not particularly funny, clever, or unique, but it is much sweeter and softer than a lot of the teen films of the edgy early 2000s. What makes Crossroads work is its charming cast and the palpable chemistry between them. In addition to giving stellar musical performances, Britney Spears is more than a decent actress, and gives a performance that really impressed me—not just because she’s not an actress, but because this script was just so soapy and silly at times that it would be hard to take it seriously in a less-dedicated actor’s voice. Any film that casts Kim Catrall as Britney Spears’ deadbeat mom is inherently campy and memorable, even if the story itself isn’t. I couldn’t think of a more random cast, a more jarring screenplay, or a more promising rising-star-vehicle, but then I watched tonight’s next film: Andrzej Bartkowiak’s film from the year 2000, Romeo Must Die.

In what initially seemed like a twist on Romeo and Juliet but ultimately was not, Romeo Must Die tosses us into the thick of a culture-clashing mafia turf war in Oakland, California, where a Chinese family and a black family once operated side-by-side in peace. But when Po, the son of a powerful don, is accosted then killed outside of a predominantly black club, suspicions arise and danger begins to pop up around every corner. When word of Po’s death reaches his brother Han (Jet Li)—all the way in a high security Hong Kong prison—Han executes a slick escape and travels to scene of the murder to investigate. His brother left a path of clues that leads Han to a trendy clothing store/coffee shop that is owned by Trish O’Day (Aaliyah), the daughter of the powerful businessman and real estate developer Isaak O’Day (Delroy Lindo.) Isaak has plans to finally stop doing shady business and go straight, but between the mysterious death of his business partner’s son, plus the recent, inexplicable bombing of a barber shop he owns, Isaak is paranoid. He assigns a lame ass security detail (played by Anthony Anderson) to his daughter Trish, and is suddenly suspicious of any Asian person. Cue Han and Trish’s chaotic meet-cute, where she ends up in the taxi he stole, in hopes that she may escape her bodyguard. But soon, she also has to dodge her father’s right hand man, Mac (Isaiah Washington), who is immediately weird, creepy, and suspicious as hell. And when Trish’s brother (D.B. Woodside) is murdered out of the blue, she becomes just as invested in this mystery as Han. The two work together to solve the murders of their siblings (sometimes with Jet Li holding Aaliyah and using her as a weapon) and in the process they uncover a wild but predictable conspiracy that rocks both criminal families. The film also stars Russell Wong, Henry O, DMX, and several impeccable stunt performers, and it was fun to watch Jet Li kick ass. Aaliyah gave a pretty decent performance, and unlike Britney, Aaliyah did have an acting background. She studied drama and graduated with a 4.0 GPA from Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, and had already starred in police drama television series New York Undercover. Romeo Must Die was a mess and a half, with one large issue stemming from the lack of a romantic storyline between the two leads of a film titled “Romeo Must Die”, and the other large issue being the heavy-handed racism. I understand that in the cutthroat world that these two families operate in, also exists in a microaggressive, inherently-racist world we all non-fictionally live in, but since all of the racist back-and-forths in this film were written by a white man, all of it gives me pause. I think the stereotyping and racism could’ve been turned down a good deal, and the same nuanced minority-on-minority racism could’ve been conveyed. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how capable the hands were that handled this film. Romeo Must Die only exists because producer Joel Silver was bored with the caliber of action movies in America, so he turned to Hong Kong action cinema, where he discovered the gracefully violent stylings of Jet Li, and decided he should bring Li’s talents to America. According to the documentary The Slanted Screen, Han and Trish were meant to have a kissing scene, which explains the title of the film, but this did not test well with audiences. It might’ve been because Jet Li was 16 years older than Aaliyah, but their coupling in general felt random. Everyone gave compelling performances, within a film that should’ve been way more compelling, in general. Romeo Must Die is full of bops, toxically masculine bros, and explosions, but it all should’ve been far more entertaining. Given the tumultuous journey Britney Spears has been on her whole life, and the tragic death of Aaliyah in 2001, these films serve as artifacts of a special, hopeful moment in time for both of these pop divas, when every possibility lay ahead of them. I enjoyed witnessing these time capsules of an iconic moment in girlhood and music/movie history, though as a result of the last 20+ years, both films carried with them more weight than they were intended to. Despite all of the campy, corny, poorly-written shenanigans of both of these movies, I had a good time watching them both. Their accidentally-thrilling premises and gritty optimism feel apt for the 599th and 600th movies to be double-featured by yours truly, and I hope you enjoyed hearing about them both. Until next time, Free Britney!