The Bling Ring

Year 15, Day 74 - 3/15/23 - Movie #4,375

BEFORE: Maika Monroe carries over from "Villains", to play the probably-notable character of "Beach Girl" in today's film. 

It's Day 15 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and today's themes are "Politics" (before 8 pm) and "Animal Stories" (8 pm and after). Here's the line-up: 

7:30 am "The Gorgeous Hussy" (1936)

9:15 am "Sunrise at Campobello" (1950)

11:45 am "Z" (1969)

2:00 pm "Seven Days in May" (1964)

4:00 pm "The Candidate" (1972)

6:00 pm "All the King's Men" (1949)

8:00 pm "The Black Stallion" (1979)

10:15 pm "Born Free" (1965)

12:00 am "Lassie Come Home" (1943)

1:45 am "National Velvet" (1944)

4:00 am "Sounder" (1972)

I can only claim four of these - "The Candidate", "All the King's Men", "The Black Stallion" and "Born Free".  I was probably just a young boy when I was made to watch "Born Free", that's the one with the lion, right?  I was also shown "Bless the Beasts and the Children" around the same time, and that film messed me up, to the point where I probably forgot watching "Born Free". 

Another 4 seen out of 11 brings me to 80 seen out of 170, so I'm down to 47%.

THE PLOT: A group of fame-obsessed teenagers use the internet to track celebrities' whereabouts in order to rob their homes. 

AFTER: Well, you're about to see some real next-level linking from me this week - the challenge was to get from the end of my romance film to something Irish in just four moves, and I'm all over that.  Who watches two Maika Monroe films in a row?  For that matter, who (besides me) has ever watched four Wolfgang Novogratz films in a row?  Simply no one. 

That's what led to me to watch "The Bling Ring" tonight - a film that, quite frankly, I could have gone on with my life JUST FINE without watching this film.  Ugh, there's just nothing HERE, even though it's based on real incidents, there was a group of entitled teens who got caught breaking into celebrities' houses and stealing their stuff.  But WHO the hell CARES??

Before I get into what's good about the film, let me tackle what's wrong with it - there's no narrative arc here.  Two teens break into Paris Hilton's house and steal some stuff.  Then they come back with more friends the next time they can confirm Paris is out of town, and steal more stuff.  Then they all go to another celebrity's house and steal some stuff, then another one, another one, and then (eventually) they get caught, because as you might figure, eventually they rob the house of a celebrity who had an alarm or a bunch of security cameras set up. But just think about that, these teens broke into maybe DOZENS of houses before they tripped an alarm or got caught on camera. And they just don't seem to be that smart, otherwise they would have checked for alarms or cameras. 

SO, the takeaway here is that MOST celebrities don't have security systems or alarms, AND most of them also leave at least one door or window unlocked at all times.  Not the front door, of course, but almost always the patio door by the pool, because who can be bothered to always be locking THAT, and then unlocking it EVERY TIME they need to walk out to the pool?  God, what a chore - better to just leave that door unlocked all the time, for when you need it.  I'm not saying you should break into any celebrity's house, but from this information, you can do what you want. 

These are also awful characters, I hate them.  All of them, if this is the most constructive thing they can do with their time, stealing clothes, purses and wads of cash from the closets and secret hiding places of celebrities.  No narrative arc also means there's no redemption for these characters, the film ends when they get sent to jail, so I will continue to hate them, the film gave me NO reason not to. 

Making a movie about these criminals and not giving them any redemption therefore comes just a bit to close to justifying and glorifying their actions.  We live in a world of publicity and social media, and there was simply no reason to make these criminals any more famous than they already were, almost making them into cult heroes if you don't show them being penalized for their wrongdoings.  So that's a lot of big mistakes from a story standpoint.  Who directed this?  Sofia Coppola?  Yeah, that seems about right.  I've never really gotten a sense that this nepo baby had any knack for telling a coherent story, and yes, I'm including "Lost in Translation" in that statement, which was little more than a mood piece, not a coherent narrative. Daddy's company has backed all of her films, just saying. 

Now, as for what's good about the film - yeah, I'm struggling to come up with anything.  Maybe I can point out that celebrities are a little too well-off, a bit too full of themselves, and some perhaps needed to be taken down a peg, but that's a real stretch. Even if they made their fortunes via reality TV, they still deserved to have safe homes and not have their stuff stolen - they should be allowed to make bad investments and blow all their money on drugs if they want to. 

Also starring Katie Chang, Israel Broussard, Emma Watson (last seen in "The Circle"), Claire Julien, Taissa Farmiga (last seen in "The Mule"), Georgia Rock, Leslie Mann (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Carlos Miranda (last seen in "Warrior"), Gavin Rossdale (last seen in "The Game of Their Lives"), Stacy Edwards (last seen in "The Bachelor"), G. Mac Brown (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Marc Coppola (last heard in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), Janet Song (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Annie Fitzgerald, Doug DeBeech, Erin Daniels, Patricia Lentz, Logan Miller (last seen in "Love, Simon"), Halston Sage (last seen in "The Last Summer"), Brenda Koo (last seen in "War Dogs"), Rachelle Carson-Begley (last seen in "Human Capital"), Peter Bigler, Nina Siemaszko (last seen in "The Artist"), Yolanda Lloyd Delgado, 

with cameos from Paris Hilton (last seen in "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"), Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "Elizabethtown"), Michael Yo, and archive footage of Lauren Conrad, Megan Fox (last seen in "Zeroville"), Lindsay Lohan (last seen in "Bobby"), Heidi Montag, Audrina Patridge, Spencer Pratt.

RATING: 3 out of 10 walk-in shoe closets