La ragazza di San Diego

30 year old teenagers dancing to 80s songs with poor singing voices. Cheesy love story between two teenagers of different worlds. Why is this even a movie? Maybe Hollywood can stop making remakes. Because they are usually not entertaining.

As a fan of the original I went in to this with an open mind and I was really excited to see this in a musical format. Great music, fun clothes, 80s, should be a no brainer right?

Wrong! The idea itself is cute and fun and there are some cool dance scenes but the dialogue between the two leads is just terrible. There is no chemistry and the dude who plays Randy is just dull. I love Mae Whitman but she's just wasted here as Randy's BFF. I mean I'm not expecting Oscar performances but even high school musical or descendants has characters that are more interesting. It just kind of feels all over the place and doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be. It bums me out bc this could have been really fun but it's lacking the heart that makes the orignal so great.

I don't mind the musical format change. It doesn't bother me that the script was altered in key spots. The main area where this movie falls short is where the original movie succeeded. The music was skewed to the pop and completely ignored the punk music. There was a distinct line in the original of two sets of behaviors and music and this movie had both sides focus on the pop. Besides some wardrobe changes both sets of people acted the same.

The biggest fail here was a misunderstanding what a valley girl was and how she behaved. They threw some one liners in the movie, but completely MISSED the essence of the valley girl. These valley girls and boys acted like regular kids and threw in some period phrases and that is not even close.

I like some of the story changes and if they got the point of the original movie and did some research on valley speak and act, it would have been good.

Put simply, this movie is just bad. None of the actors can carry a tune, all the outfits felt cheap, and the girls were not valley girls. This movie in no way needed to be a musical! The middle part was actually okay, they stopped singing and tried to develop the characters and plot; but the beginning and end were just so terrible!! I can't even describe how awful. But, three of the four original valley girls made cameos and I love them for that.

Casting: horrible. Starting with the 30 year old high schoolers casting!!! I didn't buy the chemistry between randy and Julie for one second. Sad. Liked the Alicia Silverstone tie in. That's it. This was a truly poor movie.