FFWD Weekly
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A Girl's Best Friend Is... Another Girl
Chick flick with a twist is nothing special

All Over Me
Starring Alison Folland, Tara Subkoff and Cole Hauser
Directed by Alex Sichel
Friday, July 22 - 31 at the Uptown Screen

Were you aware that "everyone secretly knows their best friend was their first real love," for girls that is? It was news to me, but that is what sisters Alex and Sylvia Sichel say regarding their film about teenage girls and the friendship they share.

Claude (Alison Folland) and Ellen (Tara Subkoff) live in New York's Hell's Kitchen, where they spend the days hanging out and practising for the band they intend to start, and the nights sleeping in Claude's single bed where they share a little bit more than a friendly peck good night. All is well with the best friends. Then along comes Mark, Ellen's new boyfriend, and all hell breaks loose (as much as hell can break loose in this movie). Mark is a bad, bad boy and Claude is none too happy about seeing Ellen with him. Not so much because Mark is bad for Ellen, but because Claude has the hots for Ellen herself.

It's a bit of a twist, I guess, not your average chick flick. But, while it may have been honorable to try and make a movie about girls, their troubles and their friendships that is different than the version Hollywood doles out to us, this film offers life in its everyday drabness; there are no real highs or lows here, it just sort of putts along (this probably isn't the Sichel sisters intention as someone is murdered along the way and new loves are found and lost). I am almost wordless over how uneventful the movie is.

The cast is decent, nothing special. The script is, again, nothing special. The whole production is actually, nothing special. The film may be just a bit too true to life - a regular, everyday boring life, that is. It's very simple and nothing is said that makes you sit up and listen. No revelations, no taking you back to your teenage years, no longings for high school friends you haven't kept in touch with, no saying to yourself, "I remember doing that."

But then, you know what? That's to be expected from nothing special.

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