Review of Girl in Progress (2012) by Birdmannavy — 17 Jan 2014

What a frustrating film! I feel that this movie could have (should have) gone in one of two directions. Either it should have been like the much more dark, but also realistic and balanced, Thirteen; or it should have gone for something more akin to Moonrise Kingdom, an adult movie for the kid in all of us. Those were Stupendous films who's heights few movies can attain, but had Girl In Progress had a little more of the focus and inspiration of the sort that drove two films then it would have gone a long way to convincing me that this was an 8 or a 9 instead of a 6. There was also some bad jokes of extremely poor taste. To wit: "Your husband beats you", said to a waitress as though that was a judgement on her character and not on her husband's. Again, regarding the same waitress, "She had a fight with a flight of stairs." Ha ha. These two jokes alone are enough to merit a Zero out of Ten in anybody's book, so it is lucky I am giving it a 6.

Anyway. The first opening minutes are completely hilarious and I busted a gut laughing. Were those minutes the extent of the film, I would give it a 10. Unfortunately that is not the spirit or the nature of the movie. I felt that creating a sympathetic mom hijacked the movie, though I have no problem with the actor, Eva Mendes, and had the film makers put all their attention on her character, provided some better development and writing were also there, that would have been fine with me. But I really wanted this to be the young woman's, the character Ansiedad's, movie and I felt let down.