Sleepover

Narcolep-sick: Sleepover is a cookie-cutter tween flick

By By Anthony Del Valle

Watching Sleepover is like déjˆ vu all over again. There's not a scene that doesn't feel as if we've seen it before. Only better.

The script by Elisa Bell (Vegas Vacation) gives us four lovelorn teenage girls (Alexa Spy Kids Vega, Mika Boorem, Scout Taylor-Compton and Kalli Flynn Childress) who throw a slumber party just before beginning high school. The get-together is an excuse to beat the really popular girls (headed by Brie Larson and Sara Paxton) at an all-night scavenger hunt--you know, the kind where they have to get possession of things like this really cool guy's boxer shorts. The popular girls are all bitches and the contest becomes a battle of good vs. evil.

To add more suspense, Vega's character Julie isn't supposed to leave home during the party, which her dad (Jeff Garlin) is monitoring; and worse, during the hunt, Julie runs into Mom (Jane Lynch) at a club, but she's not sure her mom has seen her--but, danger--Mom is trying to get to a phone to call Dad, so Julie has to hightail it home fast or all hell is going to break loose. The really big dramatic question, though, is: Will Julie get her hands on those boxer shorts, as well as the dreamboat (in the form of Sean Faris) who owns them?

Sleepover wants to be a Cinderella story for "tween" girls (8 to 12 years of age), and the premise--stale as it is--is workable. But writer Bell and first-time feature director Joe Nussbaum don't know how to execute the story's primitive material. You can't even enjoy the crude behavior of the characters (their farts, their falling down, their causing others to fall down) because everything in the film seems at least a second off in timing.

This is a straight-to-video production that somehow found its way into theaters.