The Bling Ring

Honestly baffles me this has a 2.9 average on here????? Like okay I get that it’s a bit misleading, I too expected more camp and drama and action when I read the premise. But the heists are all dry and repetitive, carried out by passive characters who barely seem cognizant of what they’re doing and certainly aren’t being strategic. It does have some bits that are boring enough to ding that half a star. But like. Doesn’t it just feel so fitting that this is how these kinds of shallow, pop culture-obsessed, celebrity wannabe teens would approach this? By mumbling and bumbling their way through the robberies, too swept away in the adrenaline and the glamor to think more than one step ahead, not realizing how lucky they’ve been to get away with so much for so long? Intentions!! Film as art baby!!! I think Coppola takes full advantage of this being a fictionalized interpretation rather than a literal biopic. Honestly, in spite of her open critique of these people’s lifestyles and personalities, she manages to ground them and make them seem more normal than their real life counterparts (watch any Alexis Neiers clip and you will understand). There’s an empathy for these kids, shown through Rebecca applying perfume and silently admiring herself, or Marc wearing pink heels as he lounges on his bed. These are private moments, meant not to flaunt their bling, but to feel special, important, and happy with themselves. As buried as it gets under the crazy party personas they have to put on, that’s all any of them want. It’s something society has pressured them to want, in this era of tabloid pop culture and the birth of social media. It would be so easy to get caught up in doing snooty caricatures, but it ultimately stays rooted in reality in a way I really love. I also adore how this is the most late 2000s-early 2010s any movie has ever looked, with the shaky cam and the overexposed vignette filters and the hair/makeup/costuming all perfectly capturing the trends of the time, no matter how ugly it looks now. It looks like they turned a TMZ article into a movie, which suits the themes so perfectly. Lots of other elements making it a strong period piece, like the trashy white girls who think it's trendy to speak "ratchet", the silly Photobooth videos, the duckface selfies, even the score— I went crazy when 212 started playing, because yeah, that’s this film’s entire vibe! I think all the performances are great and well cast, but Emma Watson in particular deserved an Oscar nomination. It’s crazy how much she nailed a character so opposite the typecast she grew up in, so hot off the heels of Harry Potter ending. Robbed queen forever