Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is directed and produced by Ghurinder Chadha (Bride And Prejudice, Bend It Like Beckham), an up and coming British female director who focuses on religious issues and specifically, teen drama, so she's a perfect director for me to look at. It is produced by Paramount and Nickelodeon, and filming took place in Brighton, Eastbourne and London locations, as well as in Ealong studios. I like how this film is just as local as mine would be, and also, its production company, Paramount, also focuses on teen drama just as Ghurinder Chadha does. This film has been coined as a 'Bridget Jones at 14', which really aplies to the sort of film I'd like to make. Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging follows Georgia, a fourteen year old girl desperate to grow up. Ghurinder Chadha's very British take on American high school movies, such as Mean Girls and Clueless, is based off of the international best-selling books by Louise Rennison and follows the eccentricity of Georgia as she overcomes the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Her two main goals in life are to have the best 15th bithday party ever, and steal the 'Sex God', Robbie, from Slaggy Lindsey. Of course, Georgia's plans involving snogging lessons, stalking Slaggy Lindsey and using the 'elastic band' theory to make Robbie jealous, don't exactly go smoothly (Todorov's narrative theory of equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium is depicted perfectly in this film).
This 'coming of age' film is perfect for what I want to base my own off. Although it won't be aimed at such a younger audience as Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging it will definitely maintain its core ideology of teenagers always having something wrong with them, and the weight of responsibility.
Mean Girls
Mean Girls looks at 'Girl World' hierarchy and the troubles of high school teenage life more as a science than anything else. It spins an interesting take on teen drama, and is alot more grown up than Angus... Mean Girls is sophisticated and complex, just as is their high school hierarchy. Fashion is an integral part of the Mean Girls film and those who aren't wearing the latest trends are automatically shunned. I like how this film is concentrated solely on fashion and all of its facets that make up the 'Girl World' because it gives a substantial look on real life, only exaggerated. Being British, I assume it's exaggerated, but the reality may be that it's not, and so I could quite easily include some of America's high school ideology. I also adore the sense of vengeance and bitchiness in this film. Angus... focuses more on the problems of just one character, but Mean Girls incorporates very clear character biographies within the film itself, and the differences and between these characters, giving the movie many more strains of interest.Mean Girls follows Cady Heron, raised in the African bush all her life by zoologist parents, and she thinks she knows enough about survival of the fittest. But the law of the jungle takes on a whole different meaning as she steps across the bridge from 'real world' to 'girl world', and the home-schooled sixteen year old enters public high school for the first time, trying to find her notch within multitudes of cliques, from jocks, mathletes, art freaks and other subcultures. Cady finds herself crossing paths with the meanest of these cliques, the 'Plastics', and the Queen Bee, Regina George, leader of the school's coolest and most fashionable threesome. When Cady starts to fall for Regina's ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels, the Queen Bee is stung - and so the schemes to destroy eachother's social status begin, with Cady helped by her original friends, Janis Ian and Damien, and Regina with her followers Gretchen and Karen. The more Cady continues to spend undercover time with the Plastics, the more she becomes one of them, forcing her to decide where her loyalties truly lie.
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