Wow. This movie was bad. Terrible acting, dumb plot, unbelievably boring. I wanted to leave after the first 10 minutes! The Duff sisters are normally bearable (i loved A Cinderella Story and Raise Your Voice),in this, they weren't. I think there were about 10 people in the theater, and about 2 people laughing at the "jokes". I suggest not seeing this. Unless you can see it for free. Even then, maybe you should think about it... I want my hour and 40 minutes back. And my money. Kids might enjoy it... but none of the kids in the theater i went to were really acting like they liked it. So i can't tell you for sure.

High time we had a hangin'. You know, I actually like Hilary Duff. She isn't so bad, compared to most of her contemporaries. Then she had to go and crap out a "movie" like this. I'm appalled that Anjelica Huston has fallen so far. Say it ain't so, Morticia. I heard this was written for the Olsen Twins, and they turned it down. I've seen New York Minute. If the Olsens turned it down, you have to be dumb or desperate to sign up, cuz it's gonna be bad. Hilary and Haley oughta get strung up for this. What a waste of talent. Maybe they'll do a horror flick and it'll happen, and then we can forgive them for swinging so low (no pun intended.) Let us pray to the movie gods for something good, soon. Please.

But for now...somebody go get a rope.

Material Girls

reviewed by Sam Osborn

rating: 1 out of 4

There's a moment in Material Girls when the infinitely wise and humble lawyer at the Free Legal Clinic bears down on the equally infinite stupidity of Ava Marchetta (Haylie Duff) and coolly snarls, "you're all frosting, without the cupcake." Granted, this one-liner is of no great wit or intelligence it does hold a kind of all-encompassing truth about Material Girls. Except, in saying Material Girls has as much density as a cupcake's frosting is probably giving the film a world of credit it has no business deserving.

The gimmick of Material Girls is in the Duff sisters. Whatever film photographed behind them on the film's posters is immaterial. For all we care, this could be Hong Kong Kung Fu Fury, just as long as it stars the Duff sisters. So in the same way people go to see Snakes on a Plane just to see some actual snakes on an actual plane, people will go see Material Girls only to watch they're adolescent idols bouncing and hopping and giggling about in front of the camera. The quality of the film behind them is irrelevant; just a prettily painted canvas for a blonde hullabaloo. But for all those parents goaded into bringing their ten-year old daughter, I suppose a synopsis is appropriate. Ava and Tanzie Marchetta (Haylie and Hilary Duff) are the faces of Marchetta Facial Products. They're glistening socialites in the vane world inhabited in reality by Paris Hilton and her partying cohorts–minus the sex tapes. They're father, Victor Marchetta, passed away two years earlier and the company will soon be left in the girls' hands. But when a cut-rate newscaster breaks a scandal on Marchetta products causing cancer, the girls' stock plummets and they're left, gasp, without their credit cards. The girls must unite and disprove the accusations in order to save the image of their father. In the process of course, Ava and Tanzie must learn humility and sincerity through the conduit of their loss of funds and fortune.

Director Martha Coolidge stumbles in her approach to the material. The film's intention bounces between parody and sentimentality. Sometimes it strives to ooze sympathy for its ditzy protagonists and rolls out the morals by the bushel. But other times, Coolidge ravages her characters with a volley of farcical gags. There's a happy middle-ground between the two intentions that a better director would likely find: where the believably clueless socialites learn to interact with the similarly convincing world of middle-class American society. But Coolidge veers more towards the feel of a sitcom, sans laugh-track. Without it, the jokes fall flat. Neither of the Duffs have a sense of comic timing and the screenplay doesn't bother with helping them along. Material Girls is so woefully unfunny that not even the heaps of twelve-year girls could be heard laughing.

Just before the film started, I mistimed my restroom break and admittedly missed the opening minute or two of the movie. I asked my girlfriend, who'd been kind enough to sit through its entirety, what I'd missed afterwards in that opening minute. She explained it to me and I felt a deep sympathy for her. She was subjected to two more minutes of Material Girls, and the thought of any more torture was physically painful to me. That's essentially the effect Material Girls has: it is physically painful to endure.

-www.samseescinema.com