Presas no Subúrbio

At the age of 14, Brittany Aarons (Danielle Panabaker) and her friends are very bored with the monotonous life they lead in the suburbs, until they receive an unexpected visit from star Jordan Cahill (Taran Killam). News that her idol, the talented pop singer Jordan Cahill, will film her new music video in a place that, until this moment, was the most boring in the world: her neighborhood! Brittany and her friend Natasha (Brenda Song) can't let this opportunity pass and without thinking twice they come up with a plan to invade the film set to be close to the singer of their dreams. Two hands.

Silly to the extreme, but cute, Brittany's family is beautiful, the teenagers are fans of a standard, normal boy, it represents me at 14... The development is that boring stuff of all the other standard movies, but the family is cute and won me over, cute, silly, cliché, teenager, boring and cool, all at the same time...

Watching Stuck In The Suburbs I got the feeling that in the end all I saw was one long commercial for the multiple and myriad uses of the cellphone. And the uses seem to multiply monthly.

Danielle Panabaker is your average by Magic Kingdom standards teenage girl from the suburbs who finds her life sanitized and boring there. Not even the arrival of friend Brenda Song from New York seems to lift her spirits.

But then the arrival of pop singing star Taran Killem to Pannabaker's town to do a music video really lifts the whole town's teenage female population. Killem is the latest bubblegum sensation who is concerned that he will not have a career after this burst of popularity when the next teen idol arrives on the scene. Something I'm sure every one of them worries about. He'd like to do more meaningful songs and at least aim at having staying power like a Crosby or a Sinatra.

When they literally collide their cellphones exchange and since they both store all the meaningful and important things on those phones, their lives are irrevocably tangled. At least until the phones get back to their proper owners.

Stuck In The Suburbs is a pleasant enough 90 or so minutes from the Disney Studios and the cast performs well enough. But with technology being what it is, can you imagine the same kind of film done in the future when we have Star Trek like communicators, Tricorders, and transport devices?

i found the film a bit predictable and boring but i am 14.

i was really annoyed with my little cousin as she was very hyper that day so i saw a film on the Disney channel and put it on and told her to watch it.

she is 6 and she loved the film, some bits she didn't get like the ending but i didn't get that either y was Eddie the star of the video shoot i thought it was Jordan's video?! but she did enjoy it.

i noticed the mistakes such as at the end Jordan was not actually playing the guitar, but she never.

it is definitely a film for if you are seriously bored or 10 and under.

it calmed my cousin down well.

although all she did was sing for the rest of the day then.

...if only Disney had stayed away from it. See, I think that this movie has some potential. Well, the main character's situation does, at least. Take out the whole Jordan Cahill thing, and you've got the beginnings of a decent movie! Of course, you also lose more than half of the film, but, oh well. Not that much of a loss.

So, here it goes: you take a typical, preppy, suburban teenage girl (Danielle Panabaker, who's actually a decent actress) whose best friends screech a lot, mostly over a "pop sensation" (I'm assuming it's a direct quote from the movie; movie's like this almost always involve that particular phrase) named Jordan Cahill. Except, of course, TPSTG wants more out of life. Enter Brenda Song's character, a sophisticated individual who is just what TPSTG needs (honestly, I don't care what the character's real name is, I like the acronym better). The two new friends go to see Jordan Cahill (one to drool, one to make fun of the droolers), and they come out of it with his cell phone. Hijinks ensue, and everything turns out alright in the end.

If only Disney, or any major film studio for that matter, didn't have such a low opinion of 8 to 14 year olds. Or maybe if 8 to 14 year olds expected a little more out of the movies targeted at them. It's sugar-coated crap like this that make me more than a little unsure who to be more disgusted with (a little film called 'High School Musical' comes to mind...)

If this movie was anything else but a Disney Channel Original Movie it'd be a disaster. I'm not the target audience but I've grown with DCOM like High School Musical and Camp rock which today I still enjoy, so I look at these movies with different nostalgic eyes. But the plot is messy to the point of being confussing and the inconsistencies in regards to many technological and straight up pop-star-world-related misconceptions could be overlooked if not for the abundance of them.

The plot came full circle in many themes and subplots it set up so the ending of the movie does feel like a fulfilling conclusion yet the second act (or middle of the movie) it's completely ridicolous because it doesn't provide reasons for the plot to unravel that way. They are in the same town and yet the celebrity or the assistant couldn't have found the phone sooner? It sure lend to funny and character development moments but it felt too unrealistic. Other movies like High School Musical and Camp Rock don't have that many unrealistic scenarios and work coherently with the development of the plot.

IN CONCLUSION, the movie is a fun movie for kids alone, especially suburban kids. Adults might find beats of it interesting related to being stuck in a boring place, not conforming with social norms and staying true to yourself and your loved ones (a Disney staple). It's not that self-aware of its mistakes because the movie concerns itself in making it work and fun. It could have been a little deeper in its message but it decided to have this clean superficial cut. Again, dumb downed and fun for kids