CROSSROADS

4/10

USA 2002 : Tamra Davis : 90 mins

Britney Spears’ big-screen debut may not be a Glitter-style embarrassment, but it’s still for fans only. They won’t mind that Crossroads isn’t so much a movie, more a carefully-calculated act of music-biz strategy: the pop princess is now in her 20s, and can’t play the virginity card much longer. So her ‘character’ Lucy beds sensitive hunk Ben (Anson Mount) after the pair have bickered their way through a cross-country road-trip, along with gal-pals Mimi (Taryn Manning) and Kit (Zoe Saldana). Everything else is just padding  to ensure minimum feature length, though the absurd brevity of Kim Cattrall’s cameo as Lucy’s long-lost mother suggests their big emotional confrontation must have ended up on the cutting-room floor. Proper acting, it seems, is one thing Britney’s still not ready to try.

19th March, 2002
(seen same day, UCI MetroCentre, Gateshead)

by Neil Young

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