Whirlygirl

Whirlygirl was premiered two nights ago at the New Haven Film Festival. The film was shot largely in New Haven, especially the New York scenes. The bulk of director Jim Wilson's film experience has come from producing 6 Kevin Costner films: Revenge, Dances With Wolves, The Bodyguard, Wyatt Earp, The Postman, and Message in a Bottle. So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to find wooden acting and poor writing in this film, even though Mr. Costner is nowhere to be found. Monet Mazur is certainly beautiful, but her performance is embarrassingly hammy; and the script is, in places, just terrible. But the guys aren't bad, and the scenes in the boys' school are fun. And Fran Kranz is always enjoyable to watch.

Whirlygirl isn't terrible, but it's definitely not memorable. (It's not even engaging, had I not been working on some tedious hand tasks while it was on I would have shut it off.)

If I were 14 I might have thought Whirlygirl was pretty swell. At its core the film is essentially the standard fantasy storyline of a plain boy's life being transformed by an encounter with the exotic.

In Whirlygirl the exotic is the "whirlygirl" herself, an exotic dancer (she doesn't exactly strip) whose erotic dancing skills are legendary. (That seems a ridiculous plot device, even more so considering the film is set in contemporary times.) Boy goes after girl and adventures of one typical type and another ensue.

The adventures in Whirlygirl never really feel all that exciting. The various self discoveries don't feel revealing. The scenes of abandoning yourself to the moment feel like imitations of better films.

Whirlygirly doesn't feel like a story from someone's life, it feels like a film. Setup, plot device, plot device, plot device, cliché supposedly dramatic conclusion. The End.

Despite dipping its toes into drama Whirlygirl is really just a feel good film that's not sickeningly sweet. As such it's a fine film to watch while sick on the couch or stuck in a hotel room that has free HBO.

Whirlygirl suffers primarily from a bad script and poor direction. The script lacks the closure of a third act; we are left hanging thinking there needed to be something more. There is a rescuer scene which I guess the director thought would be a climax but the movie has an episodic feel to it.

This film is based on a true story. Well the scriptwriter should have embellished it since true stories do not make compelling films. The lead actor Julian Morris does a decent job with the material but the rest of the cast performances are flat. In fact one of the students, who was acting like he was just waking up had a believability level of zero. Speaking of Morris, I had just watched him in Cry Wolf where he also plays a prep school student and his character seems to have walked out of that slasher movie into this one. Slasher movies can get by without any character development but a film like Whirlygirl requires it.

Hats off to DP Christo Bakalov for delivering some great images to such a hollow story.

It's been done before, and done before better. A year ago The Girl Next Door had most of the same concepts, themes and lessons. Studious boy meets wild girl, boy breaks the rules for the first time, girl straitens her life for the first time, they fall in love, and then what? However, the amateur writer (McCormack) should have remembered to add a climax, or even a third act. It was one of those movies that just seemed to be, "Is this the conclusion?" Debuting in his first American film, said UK actor Julian Moris, gave a realistic, well done performance. Whirly Girl Monet Mazur is beautiful; unfortunately, less could be said about her acting. Profanity and nudity may be an issue for ratings, there is mild nudity during the sex scenes and what kind of language would you expect from 18-year-old boys?

Nothing bad could be said about the image or audio quality. Then again, nothing new in the world of aesthetics was brought to the picture either, nor should have been. It's a typical 'on location' picture. The musical score is mostly combined with a mix of pop and rock hits, appropriate for the scenes but soon to be outdated.

Don't get the wrong impression I did enjoy the picture. It was as good as average for its genre and worth seeing once. It repeats some cut and paste storyline; however, Whirly Girl is cute, funny, and entertaining in its own. The scenes at the boarding school with the horny teenage boys are hilarious and very tangible for any young adult male. This picture serves the appetite of its young adult (17-25) target audience.

Review by, Darren R. Brandl

The movie adopts the classic story of a good boy falling for the bad girl and turning her around from her misguided life. The action is very similar to the movie "The Girl Next Door", doesn't have many strong differences. Anyway it's still a fun-to-watch movie.

On a larger description, this young guy who's studying very hard on a good university falls for a strip dancer when she comes to dance for their little party and kisses him (stealing his watch in the same time). He goes in New York to find her to get his watch back and from from them on she drags him trough many adventures which almost cause him to be expelled out of the university. I won't mention the end not to spoil the movie experience for those who read my comment, but I'll say this, he manages to turn her around but it happens the other way around also. Watch it, it's not a waste of time.