Girl Group

TIFF Film #9

This is hands down, the worst film I've seen at any film festival and what's more so is that this was actually a gala presentation. So it got one of the biggest screens, had cast and crew in attendance, and I am in utter disbelief. To me, this screamed like streaming slop. After the film ended, I turned to the critic next to me, and we both debated whether or not the script was written by AI.

The problems with this film really come down to its script. There are a variety of other issues, but it all starts with the script. All of the characters are paper-thin because there are a ridiculous amount of people stuffed into this movie, and the only person who ever really gets any sort of character depth is the character played by Rebel Wilson herself.

I'm not sure about the incessant need to focus on Rebel Wilson when this film is entitled Girl Group and it's meant to be focusing on these younger girls who want to be pop stars. But it's a real shame that we don't get to spend time with these individuals because they just become so uninteresting. Their characters are given nothing to work with.

They are stereotypes that go through the change you expect them to go through by the end of the film. The biggest reason I think AI was used to write this film is that it resembles a film. It has all of the bones that a film should have. Characters start at point A and end up at point B. However, there's no journey from point A to point B.

There are two sister characters in the movie who are fighting with each other because they're both in separate girl groups. So by the end of the movie, they will have made up, and that is what happens but there is no scene dedicated to them actually putting in the work to make up. I could genuinely list perhaps every character in this movie, and there is a case to be made about them having no scenes of actual character development in the film. This is maybe because over 30 licensed songs were used in the making of this movie and so much time is spent on scenes that are musical numbers.

On a side note, Rebel Wilson, when introduced in the film, said that she couldn’t believe that a film of this size was made on the budget that they had. Given the number of licensed songs and celebrity cameos in this movie, I think it's an insult to call this an independent project or a project made on very little money. It also would have been very nice if some of the time spent listening to these songs was dedicated to actually developing our characters.

There was a Q&A at the end of this film where Rebel detailed that Gen Z audiences related to different characters depending on who they spoke to. Rebel decided to list all of the characters' names and the way in which Gen Z people related to them. The speech that she gave was more in-depth than any of the actual storylines that any of the characters had. When she started listing off these names, I had no idea who she was talking about in each instance and I'd just finished the film.

If you need further proof that the film was uninterested in the girls its meant to be about, the Q&A was Rebel Wilson, Jennifer Coolidge and Randall Park, both of whom play small parts in the film. None of the main girls were there, instead they were spoken about but also for such a short amount of time, it’s truly nuts given the name of the film.

I just can't get over how things happen in this movie because they feel like they should. There's a girl who's silent for the majority of the movie, and in the background of many scenes. Oh, don't worry, towards the end of the movie, she's going to break out into a rap all of a sudden in possibly one of the cringiest scenes I've ever seen. There's also just like destructive messaging about the way that we sexualise young pop stars, that the film feels incapable of handling or digging into. And to top it all off, the success at the end of this movie is supposed to be because the girls are embracing their authenticity, but instead, when you really think about it, it's just because they know a famous person.

I truly thought this was dreadful. None of the jokes land. It's vulgar for vulgar's sake. There’s a diabolical romance plotline that should have just been taken out of the film. The celebrity cameos are truly a sight to behold as none of them can act. I would say it's choreographed quite nicely in some places it’s just a shame that the entire movie is shot like a shitty Netflix movie and the edit is cut so fast that you don't really get to appreciate the dancing on offer. Just back-to-front one of the worst films I saw.