I have a confession to make: In the celebrity feud of 2004, I side with Lindsay Lohan and against Hillary Duff. That said, I could barely stand Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, last year’s pre-Mean Girls Lohan vehicle which – with its inattention to narrative or character development (aside from watered-down after-school special lessons) and maniacal focus on fashion, make-up, and sexualized young girls – is nearly identical to a half-hour episode of Duff’s former Disney Channel program The Lizzie Maguire Show. This excruciating Sara Sugarman-directed fiasco tells the too-cute tale of Lola (Lohan), an obnoxious bohemian and aspiring actress whose mother uproots her from beloved Manhattan to New Jersey, where she has to teach her high school friends and rivals that being yourself is, like, the coolest. It’s hard to even call Teenage Drama Queen a movie, since there’s virtually no story or cinematographic value to this parade of underage, underdressed hotties. Lola models an exhausting array of ultra-fashionable outfits, but her battle against a bitchy rival (Megan Fox) is so mind-numbingly juvenile that it’s difficult to even pay attention to Lola and her best friend Ella’s (Alison Pill) attempts to crash a going-away party for their favorite band SidArthur or the climactic Brittany Spears-inspired high school adaptation of “Pygmalion” which Lola headlines. And if I still haven’t convinced you to avoid this deflating dud, I have another confession to make: My teen movie-loving wife disliked it even more than I did.
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