Eating the rich is a cinematic trope that I can always get behind, as it has actually become one of the leading themes in films of the past few years. Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring was a bit ahead of its time, as it attempts to bring this message to the upscale lives of teenagers living in Los Angeles. While I do not think it did a very good job of that, I did enjoy the performances and some of the topics that this film tried to cover. As almost universally loved as this film was, I expected to like it a lot more but given the unlikability of the characters, unrealisticness of their actions, and the inescapably awkward direction, I just could not bring myself to like this movie very much. There are a lot of things to admire about Coppola's true story adapted from an article but not enough to have any impact on me. I really, desperately, wanted to like this film because of its cast and the fact that I have not seen any of Sofia Coppola's films yet but this movie was an unfortunate start to that.
After being transferred schools yet another time, misfit Marc (Israel Broussard) becomes friends with a girl named Rebecca (Katie Chang). Marc finds out that she is prone to breaking in and stealing things from small-time celebrities in Hollywood and plans to work her way up to robbing Lindsay Lohan. Marc joins her as they indulge in this crime spree with their friends Nicki (Emma Watson), Chloe (Claire Julien), and Sam (Taissa Farmiga), but the group soon realizes that there is a price to pay when it comes to burglary in one of the richest cities in the world. The Bling Ring tries to tackle a handful of various subjects in a very short amount of time and with a script that clearly did not have that capacity. While I do not feel like most of them succeeded, one thing did and that was the focus on looking up to celebrities. I really enjoyed how this movie touched on celebrity status and just how important achieving that level of social wealth was to these characters. It is ridiculous how important having the most expensive clothes and jewelry was and this theme was clearly at the forefront of the film, shown through every one of these kids. The performances from the whole cast were solid and they each definitely made their characters stand out. Despite the lack of much remarkability in the script and a seemingly absent sense of moving the story along, this cast did a good job of holding the story together. Broussard and Watson are particularly good, as they embodied their criminal characters very well. I also really enjoyed the cinematography from Christopher Blauvelt and Harris Savides. Even though most of this film was handheld, there was one scene that really stood out. While Marc and Rebecca rob a home in one, long take, Blauvelt and Savides utilized shadows and composition from outside the house in such exquisite ways that definitely made the scene pop.
My main problem that infested this movie from the very beginning is that I enjoyed what it was trying to say but not at all how it said it. I have no prior experience with Sofia Coppola as a director and so The Bling Ring was definitely a hit or miss for me. I lean more on the side of miss, however, as I just could not get myself to like the execution. I completely agree with this film's message of destabilizing the class system and the dramatic means of doing so in this film are obviously just there to move the story along. However, this meant that the group of teenagers was incredibly unlikeable. In order to make someone feel for a protagonist's struggle, there has to be some amount of relatability and this movie just could not accomplish that. By the time these kids were sentenced to prison in the end, I just frankly did not even care. These teens, throughout the entire film, were just snobby, bratty, LA kids with no real reason to commit these crimes other than for the thrill and it made me loathe them. I would have been much more engaged if I got to know these kids' backstories beforehand or even just their reasons for robbing the houses but I never got that satisfaction. Too much time was just spent rummaging through clothes and moving on from house to house and it became painfully dull to me. For a film that has of-the-time pop music running through its veins and focusing on these fashionable criminals, this film was very bleak. I did not enjoy how spacey and lackluster the entire story felt and the mess was never cleaned up, either. I also did not fully understand some of the plot choices in this film. These characters are supposed to be teenagers in high school yet they are seen dancing and drinking at the club with high-profile celebrities and no consequences. I understand that they are criminals after all, but those choices seem to only be there to make the characters even more frustrating and unrealistic.
The Bling Ring is just about as exciting as one would expect an adaptation of a Variety article to be. There is a lot of potential throughout this film as it feels like it is constantly trying to build up to something. I appreciate what Coppola was trying to do with this story and while I did enjoy the soundtrack, the upbeat pop atmosphere was not nearly enough to make up for the horribly dull story and lack of interest in the fates of these characters.
My Rating: ★★★
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