I apologize for slacking on this. I'm gonna try to knock out some more of these this week.
Girls Rock!2007
Dirs. Arne Johnson, Shane King
I remember back in 2006seeing a trailer for this and thinking it looked cute and fun. Seeing that it was available on Watch Instant made it a must for this marathon. Having now seen it, I can say that while its heart is in the right place I'm probably not the audience it was made for. I bet if you have a young daughter with a love for rock n roll she may be inspired by this, but it feels like 2 parts of a commercial and 1 part feminist boot camp. I mean there is a scene where they are teaching all these girls self defense. The scene is mostly girls kicking pads at crotch level yelling "NO!". As if all men, 8 years old and up, are rapists.
As I mentioned above, I'm probably not the target audience. Over the weekend, on New Year's Eve I went to a concert. At the concert I met a very nice 16 year old girl. She was standing next to me and we talked a bit. What I learned is that behind eyes that told me she was passionate about some things, and the way she sang along at the top of her voice, punching the air, she certainly is a passionate person. But she was so wary about sharing her opinions. She had very little self confidence. I just wanted to tell her that she has good taste, and to own her opinions. This camp certainly does everything it can to empower the campers to grab a hold of their individuality, the personal voice and run with it. I really hope that the girl I met will find her voice and courage in the way many of these girls did, she has a great personality and she's afraid to show it.
The filmmaking here is pretty standard. Nothing noteworthy. Nor are the subjects. They're nice girls who all needed something like this, but the film fails to wow in the way other Rock Docs do, with music. Which isn't there fault. Most of the musicians never picked up an instrument until this camp, and with only 5 days to learn their instrument, form a band and write a song you can imagine how many of these songs are train wrecks. Again, its unfair to judge them, I'm just stating the obvious. There are glimmers of talent and you can see some of these girls really coming into their own, but the film is much more a "Girl Power" film than a Rock 'n' Roll film. At times it feels like the music is a means to militarize young women.
Grade C-
Grade C-