Last night, I watched the first post-Deadly Adoption Lifetime movie, Perfect High!
Why Was I Watching It?
Because it was on Lifetime and it was about a dancer, of course!
What Was It About?
Amanda (Bella Thorne) is a suburban teen who loves to dance. But, after an injury, she gets hooked on prescription pills. She also becomes best friends with druggie Riley (Daniela Bobadilla), Riley’s boyfriend Nate (Ross Butler), and Carson (Israel Broussard). Soon, Carson and Amanda are dating and they become perhaps the most boring couple in history. Of course, since this is Lifetime, the prescription drug abuse quickly leads to heroin, death, and a minute-long rehab scene.
What Worked?
The film did a good job of capturing both the excitement of dancing and the sheer terror of being injured and knowing that, as a result, you can’t do what you love.
What Did Not Work?
The whole movie was just so predictable and so slow. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that a Lifetime film about teenagers using drugs isn’t going to exactly be unpredictable. From the start of the film, I knew that one of the four friends was going to have to die and I easily guessed which one it was going to be. That’s just the way it works, somebody always has to die in these films.
But the problem is that we are now living in a post-Deadly Adoption age. After seeing every single Lifetime convention skewered last week, it’s hard to go back to taking any of those conventions seriously. The whole time I was watching the film, I kept expecting Will Ferrell to suddenly show and start bellowing, “SHE NEEDS HER MEDICINE!”
As well, Perfect High moved way too slowly for its own good. As characters, Amanda, Riley, Nate, and Carson all fell flat. Even before they ended up as drug addicts, they seemed like they wouldn’t be that interesting of a group to hang out with. Before doing drugs, they spent all their time laying on the couch. After doing drugs … well, that couch became even more comfortable. For an anti-drug film to really work, you have to mourn what the character could have been if not for their addictions. But, in Perfect High, everyone seemed to be just as dull regardless of whether they were high or not.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
The movie was about a red-haired dancer who popped too many pills in high school. Oh my God, just like me!
Lessons Learned
Stay away from that heroin, kids. Of course, I already knew that. Even when I was going through my phase where I wanted to experiment with and try everything, I still knew better than to ever use heroin. (Actually, to be honest, I should say that if I had ever had the opportunity to try heroin, I would have politely declined. Fortunately, I never even had to deal with being offered heroin, which I guess is the benefit of going to both a high school and a college where everyone was too busy smoking weed to worry about harder drugs.) Whenever I see a movie like Perfect High, I always wonder how the characters involved have never seen any other movies about heroin abuse.
I mean, don’t they watch Lifetime!?
Through the Shattered Lens 