Odd Girl Out

"Odd Girl Out" (2005) Alexa Vega, Lisa Vidal, Leah Pipes. 4.5/5.0 stars. When a girl (Vega) finds that her closest friends start to spread rumors and ruin her life she starts to break down to the hurtful and often harmful rituals of High School. Vanessa is your average girl trying to find herself in the world. She is friends with Stacey (Leah Pipes), the most popular girl in school, until Nikki (Elizabeth Rice) and Tiffany (Alicia Morton) sabotage her friendship with the queen bee and the clique. She is tortured throughout the school year until finally, the words start to get to her, and not in a good way. The school outcast, Emily (Perry) joins Vanessa on her quest to navigate through the dreadful everyday life that our teens go through everyday. My thoughts on it-This definitely hit the surface with a stone, and made some huge points that "Mean Girls" (2004) failed to point out. HIhg School may be the hardest times of our lives. Especially when your friends turn on you, and you are all alone in a teenage wasteland of betrayal, rumors, and raging hormones. This is the real deal. The secret life of girls is NOT pretty. What goes on behind our backs-Its one place where you cannot protect your children. Parents should know that this movie does contain some very dramatic elements to it. There is some very intense moments or drama and schoolyard insults such as slut, whore, or bitch. There is some sexual references made through out the movie. Children under 13 should have an adult or guardian around for some mild discretion.

Rated TV-14 for Strong language and thematic elements.

The very overrated 2004 flick "Mean Girls" was praised by critics for its "biting" and "accurate" portrayal of clique-y high school girls. Please, "Mean Girls" is so tame, so glossy it should have been called "'Valley Girl' with PMS". Just a year after "Mean Girls"'s release, Lifetime released "Odd Girl Out", a terrifying tragic tale of adolescent cruelty. Based on Rachel Simmons's nonfiction book of the same name, "Odd Girl Out" is a stylized but painfully realistic look at how teenage girls will attack each other not with four-letter words or fists, but with rumors, dirty looks, and any form of underhanded bullying. "Odd Girl Out" reveals the 21st century's newest form of torment: cyber-bullying.

Our protagonist Vanessa (Alexa Vega, "Spy Kids") is an A-student comfortably situated in her popular clique of friends. When fair weather friend Niki (played by appropriately unattractive Elizabeth Rice) becomes jealous of Vanessa's social standing, she decides to take her down a peg by turning Vanessa's shallow best friend Stacy (Leah Pipes) against her and spreading hateful rumors and gossip. Gossip turns into thinly veiled insults ("That tray looks really heavy," one girl sneers at Vanessa during lunch), which in turn become relentless abuse (a web site dedicated to insulting Vanessa is put up). Vanessa tries her best to ignore this undeserved mistreatment, but the emotional pain becomes too much for her to bear. Vanessa's self-esteem and life begin to crumble, and her mother (Lisa Vidal) desperately struggles to help her anguished daughter.

As someone who was picked on (albeit not as badly) in middle school, I must say this movie is right on the mark. This is really how middle school girls behave: they'll simply choose their victim and attack at random. No rhyme, no reason, they are driven by their own self-absorption and insecurities. I'll admit it, "Odd Girl Out" made me cry for myself, for poor Vanessa, and anyone else who was victimized at that age. Vega is astonishingly good as Vanessa, who is forced to go through pure hell scene after scene. You really see the desperation and loneliness reflected in her sad brown eyes. Vidal is also in fine form as Vanessa's loving but somewhat clueless mom. Rice, Pipes, and Alecia Moore are realistic as the pack of former friends who torture Vanessa.

Some people complain that "Odd Girl Out" plays too much like a horror movie. Anyone who agrees with that sentiment obviously never attended public middle school.

I have always been intrigued by the fact that a school in general consists of two separate realities:the more or less controlled environment of the classroom and the unknown reality of what goes on between students once they are not supervised by their teachers. As a former educator myself, I can assure you that life at school for certain young people can be a living hell.Pestering occurs at every level: kindergarten kids who physically threaten their classmates in order to obtain candy, high-school students who desperately seek excuses as to avoid the humiliation and isolation they experience during recreation not to mention the subtle intrigues that occur at a university level."Humans" in general apparently have a genetically determined urge to reinforce their own feelings of self esteem by preying on easy victims. It is therefore of the utmost importance that parents be aware of the cruel reality that often exists in schools and pay close attention to any alarming change in attitude or conduct on the part of their children. "Odd Girl Out", sadly enough, is a brilliant account of events that are closer to reality than one initially would be willing to believe.Very convincing acting by Alexa Vega as the tormented youngster and Lisa Vidal as the anguished mother

I'm a man. Previously a boy.

Except for certain advances in communications technology made since 1982, I had basically the exact same experience as the girl in the movie (with all the genders reversed, of course).

For people who have been through an experience as vindictive, drawn-out, thorough, and unrelenting as the experience suffered by the girl in the movie, this will be a movie-watching experience both very painful and very valuable.

Perhaps even more so for those of us who didn't have a parent as ideal and understanding as the one in the film. But, for the purposes of the film and its messages, that character is well-designed and serves many useful purposes.

This film covers a lot of bases in a lot of ways. It's an impressive accomplishment, seeing as it's impossible to really do justice to the subject matter in the space of a standard film. Very, very impressive.

I like hard-hitting, gritty dramas like Requiem For A Dream, Bad Lieutenant, and that sort of thing (also, harsh black comedies like Shallow Grave, Bitter Moon, etc.). This film hit me harder than any of those.

Girls can be as visibly and simply and physically violent as the stereotypical boys (e.g., the tormentors and killers of Reena Virk in British Columbia, Canada). And boys can be as invisibly and complexly and non-physically violent as the stereotypical girls.

It's not a simple world out there. And it has a lot of barbarians in it. Male and female. And they don't all fit within the usual gender roles.

There are plenty of masculine, heterosexual evil boys who behave like evil girls -- because they know it's tougher to get caught that way and that the damage done is deeper; in other words, the smarter ones use more complex and indirect methods. And everyone is far less aware of them than the big, dumb, loud, physically-violent ones -- indeed they likely never get caught because their male victims wouldn't be manly/masculine/tough/cool/honourable/etc. if they were to complain about it or admit to being bothered by it or to cry about it, would they? Just show me all the girls who lust after and fall in love with men who cry about getting bullied. Oh, that's right, there aren't any -- they're too busy fawning over the thoughtful, intelligent, emotionally-literate, understanding Alpha-male goons who are beating those other guys up. Sorry, I forgot.

It's frequently unlike the stereotype of "boy beats guy up, and it's over -- simple." And in those cases, it's particularly damaging when you've been socialized into the idiotic philistine social orthodoxy of boys not being allowed to cry, and boys have to keep a stiff upper lip and hide and suppress their feelings.

Anyway.... the film accomplishes its goals and its messages beautifully. 9-outta-10.

I watched the movie on Monday and I believed it touched many lives, even young men. Vanessa character I thought showed her growing towards the end. She gained confidence of not having or needing to appease Stacy and the others. I enjoyed the scene where Vanessa's mother, gave her an example of an incident in her life. This helped Vanessa to come down off the defensive and communicate with her mother. Therefore, it showed strength in her character with the help of a new friend. I don't believe the lighting was bad at all in the classroom scenes. In watching on my television the lighting was adequate.

I did notice a scene that the actress was in a different position than the actual shot. When editing how many times are scenes looked over? This is for my knowledge. Thanks.