Centered around how fame and the celebrity life style can quite literally be an obsession – to both celebrities and people who want to be part of the lifestyle, The Bling Ring poorly outlines the true story about how this obsession can consume people.
The Bling Ring centers around Marc (Israel Broussard), a young boy in high school living in California. After joining the “drop out high school,” because he was home schooled for a year, he meets a girl named Rebecca (Katie Chang) who befriends him. Clearly a rich, young, and pretty girl, Marc soon learns that Rebecca is rather rebellious. Beginning with attempting to open cars parked on the street to loot money and other fashion goods, the two soon begin to start robbing celebrities’ houses – which is easier than it first may seem. After a few successful visits to Paris Hilton’s house (fun fact: Paris Hilton cried when seeing The Bling Ring) and others’ homes, they soon bring more friends into their “bling ring,” and get deeper into obsession and eventual steal over $3 million dollars worth of items.
Sofia Coppola was the director and writer and clearly wanted to share this story of robbery and fame-obsession with the world. Although she’s an Academy Award winner for her writing, The Bling Ring will not go down as one of her best works. While cinematography is the film’s strongest aspect, many scenes left me thinking “what was the point of that scene” and “how does this contribute to the overall story.” At the beginning, the plot seems like it would build a lot more – but eventually basically repeats itself over and over. The climax is somewhat exciting, but the resolution is very minimal, both in terms of a proportional amount of length of time to the rest of the film, and how well the story concludes.
Coppola changed the names of the characters in the film to avoid making the real perpetrators even more famous for their wrongdoings – which makes sense. Although those were her intentions, clearly it still somewhat happened due to many people around the country being interested in this story now. If her real intentions were to show how easy it is to be caught up in the fashion and celebrity-obsessed culture, then she achieved that – but based upon how there’s not a big drive behind the plot and how sub-par the acting was, I’m not certain that it should have been attempted at all.
Emma Watson is the most famous actress stars in The Bling Ring – except for arguably Leslie Mann – and she, unfortunately, gives the worst performance. While examining her acting in The Bling Ring extremely objectively (I am, overall, an Emma Watson fan), her American accent is worse than what it was in Perks, and she pulls of an L.A. girly-girl extremely unconvincingly. Personally, I think she should stick with portraying a British person while acting – I don’t think portraying an American is her strong suit. Additionally, Emma should not be the #1 reason to see the film. Although she was used for publicity a lot, she was not the protagonist and has a supporting role.
Overall, The Bling Ring does explicitly outline the story of a group of teenagers stealing things from celebrities – but that’s about all it does. Although an interesting story generally with unique cinematography, it doesn’t give any “wow” factor, or stand with a strong purpose.
Grade: C
Rated: R (for teen drug and alcohol use, and for language including some brief sexual references)
The Bling Ring opens in theaters on June 21.
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