Read It and Weep

I was wondering if anyone knows if there was going to be a soundtrack to the new DCOM "Read it and Weep", because I love the song at the end done by Nick Whitaker, AKA Lenny, Jamie's brother. After the movie showed on Friday, I looked continuously for almost two hours and couldn't find the song anywhere. The title is "I Will Be Around". The movie also had many other great songs. I was able to find "Outside Looking In", but thats about it so far. This was one of the best Disney channel movies that has come out in a long time, and I loved it. All the cast members did a GREAT job, and I also thought it was wonderful the way they chose to have the Panabaker sisters play Jamie, and "Is". They were a great team.

The Panabaker Sisters Kay and Danielle play a high school novelist and her creation. Their film Read It And Weep shows what happens when your creation starts running and ruining your life.

Kay Panabaker is a freshman in high school with all the angst therein just trying to find your place. She's really treated bad by Allison Scagliotti the head cheerleader and mean girl. Her two friends are also some oddballs played by Alexandra Krosney and Marquise Brown are artists and activists and go in for causes like saving the whales.

Kay is a writer and diarist. She's written a diary in the form of a novel with characters modeled on the people she knows in school. When it accidentally gets published Panabaker is a celebrity.

Her sister Danielle plays the diarist and heroine Isabella and she becomes alive like Dr. Jekyll's Mr. Hyde and takes over. In fact the classic story is referenced.

The Panabaker sisters do all right in this Disney comedy. Kay gets to choose between faithful Jason Dolley and hunk Chad Broskey.

It's a Disney film, who do you think?

For as long as I can remember, I've been addicted to Disney movies whether they were animated or on the Disney Channel. I remember waiting every month for the latest Disney Channel film to premiere and throughly enjoying each new film. Though I cannot pin-point exactly when it started happening but slowly Disney Channel movies began taking a turn for the worst and I stopped watching them as I grew older; no doubt they were still entertaining for little kids but one of the things I always enjoyed (and still do) about Disney is that they masterfully appeal to both children and adults, not to mention those inbetween. The first Disney Channel movie I watched in as long as I can remember was "High School Musical" and my faith in the channel was instantly renewed. But this review is not about "High School Musical", but about Disney's latest film "Read It and Weep," the first Disney Channel film since "HSM" that actually caught my attention.

"Read It and Weep" follows the (mis)adventures of a high school freshmen, Jamie, who is always on the outside looking in. True, she's got three great friends, a cool but strange older brother and loving parents but Jamie wants something more. She wants the hottest boy in school, Marco, to notice her and wants to be able to stand up against Sawyer and her gang of "Populars" for once. But, seeing as Jamie will never be able to get up the guts to do these things, she creates the character Is to live out these wishes for her. Is (short for Isabelle) is the girl that every other girl wants to be and every guy wants to date; in short, Is is perfect. Not only can Is climb the rope in gym class and get the guy, but she can also "zap" away any problem that gets in her way. Accidentally, Jamie turns in the story of Is to her English teacher and the "novel" ends up being published in the school newspaper because making it all the way to the Bestseller list. Suddenly Jamie (or rather, Is) finds herself sky-rocketing in popularity; Sawyer and the "Populars" actually want to be friends with her and Marcco is starting to look her way. But slowly, things start to get out of control, especially when Is begins to manifest herself as a more permanent part of Jamie's life and prompt Jamie to wonder how much of Is is just a character and how much of Is is in herself. Jamie faces the age-old dilemma of choosing between what she thinks she wants and what made her happy before, leaving a good message for all tweens who watch the film.

As an 18-year-old, I found certain things about the film bothersome that wouldn't even enter the mind of the tweens and younger children who watch it, so I know I'm simply nitpicking. The fact that Jamie's novel is so successful in such a short time is highly impossible, though enviable, but the plot is bearable given the fact that it's a light-hearted kid's film and the intended audience wouldn't care too much about all the steps it takes to earning that sort of career and popularity. The story is cute (based upon the pre-teen novel "How my Private Journal Become a Best Seller -sorry if that's not the exact title) and the characters are warm, though Jamie is slightly obnoxious at times. The real winner of the story, however, is Is (played by Danielle Panabaker, Kay's older sister) who doesn't get as much screen time as she should. Panabaker Sr. plays her character with a comfortable ease, no doubt feeding off the fact that she's used to upstanding her younger sis (though Kay has a promising career in front of her in the children's movie set, if I'm not mistaken) and is enjoyable the entire time.

For the intended audience, "Read It and Weep" offers a very important lesson: you don't need to be superhuman to be happy and content. Being yourself is just as fine as being like Is. While most children's films will force their messages down the throats of the kids watching, "Read It" manages to work the meaning into the story without making it painfully obvious.

As with any children's movie, the story is sub duded, written for a child to understand and enjoy (though this is one of the first Disney Channel films I remember where two of the characters actually kiss; there was only a peck on the check in "HSM." The little romance between Jamie and her background best guy friend was more then enough to keep me interested) but still manages to capture the attention of any age group. Even at the age of 18, I found the movie adorable and entertaining, something I would watch again given the chance.

While "Read It and Weep" is no "High School Musical", it is certainly a movie to stand with "HSM" when it comes to turning around the quality of Disney Channel movies. If Disney continues to make films like "Read It and Weep", which smartly appeal to kids, teenagers and older teens like myself, then they were be right back on track with the old films they used to make "back in the day." "Read It and Weep" certainly deserves a viewing, no matter your age and, if nothing else, will leave you with a hint of a smile on your face.

After reading a few messages about the book on IMDb, I knew I had to watch this. Prior to it's airing, I heard of the original title, and later had visions in my head of Danielle Panabaker dressed in a cheap superhero costume, fighting villains in the same manner as Rik Mayall's "People's Poet" from an episode of "The Young Ones," spouting out catchphrases so lame that even Archie comics wouldn't use them. Well, I was a little far from that, but still saw a fairly interesting story.

Kay Panabaker plays Jamie Bartlett, a girl struggling to survive the hierarchy of high school social life. She has three best friends, including one boy who has an obvious crush on her. Her father, ex-Even Stevens dad and legendary announcer Tom Virtue, runs a pizza parlor with her mother(Connie Young), and tries to experiment in oddball toppings. Jamie deals with the repressive tyranny of high school life by writing in a personal journal on a tablet computer, using fictional characters loosely based on the people she knows there. When she gets it mixed up with a school article for school and sends it off to be published in a school newspaper, the whole world finds out about it and her life starts to fall apart. Sounds like "Harriet the Spy," you say? Nope. Because unlike Harriet M. Welch, Jamie's private diary has an alter-ego, a semi-super-heroine named "Is," played by Kay's older sister Danielle... or at least that's what she is at first. Besides that, at first most people like her writing including her enemies.

The Great Isabella(Is) is sort of like Kim Possible with superpowers. She can do anything -- climb a rope in the gym, stroll through the halls of school zapping it's tormentors into permanent(or at least long-term) detention, get the boy of her dreams with ease, and appear only in front of Jamie. She also evolves from a heroine into a monster. Through Is, Jamie gains fortune and fame, gets her parents' pizza place some more business, gets to hang out with the school snobs who used to torment her, gets the boy of her dreams, and unfortunately nearly loses her friends, then everything else when she inadvertently reveals the inspiration for the villains in her book on a talk show. Who's going to get her out of this mess? Her parents? Her handler? Her protagonist? Her friends? The boy she loves? The boy who loves her?

Like Lizzie McGuire's Ashlie Brillault, Jamie's nemesis(Allison Scagliotti) looks much better than Jamie. Even when the trailers were shown, there's no doubting Kay's resemblance to her sister. Beyond that, she wears more make up than her older sister did in "Stuck in the Suburbs." The ending seems somewhat predictable, and unfortunately not believable. I don't think that after a Carrie-style attack on a high school dance, that the kids would be ready to get back into the music. But I suppose if you don't have incidents like these at school functions, they tend to become lame.

Some may see this as an excuse to get Danielle and Kay Panabaker to work together on the same project. That's okay by me. I saw Twitches(2005)(TV) as a lame excuse to keep the Mowry Sisters together one last time. Better DCOMs than this have existed, but this one is okay.

I loved this movie. I even have to say that I think it was almost better than High School Musical because it didn't have all the song interrupting the story line. The movie made me want to write, it made me feel what Conner felt, I know, sounds really cheesy but it's true. I could actually feel Conner's embarrassment, his love for Jameson, his happiness and how his heart jumped when Jameson finally saw him and not Marco. I think the Panabaker sisters did an awesome job. Daniel, Is, was a perfect alter ego, the point of the movie was that Is, was supposed to seem like she was helping and was a good, nice person in the beginning but towards the end she showed her other side, her alter ego, and it showed that she wanted everything to be about her. It was absolutely awesome, it really shows the point of the movie and gives a good message to kids every age. If I had 8 more thumbs I'd give it a 10 thumbs up, but I don't so 2 thumbs up!