I know it's hard for me to break away from the habit of associating the classic MTV cartoon with other movies and TV shows, and it seems like a stretch to associate it with a Disney Channel made-for-TV movie. But the fact remains that in the episode "Monster" Daria and Jane do to Quinn what Josh Rosen does to Dylan Schofield, and finds there's more to their respected subjects than meets the eye.
Matt Porkrop plays Josh Rosen, the head of a high school film club. The club's membership includes and is evidently limited to Jimmy Bellinger, The Troop's David Del Rio, and Kayce Rohl, who plays a girl with a crush on Josh. And of course, there's Modern Family's Sarah Hyland who plays Dylan Schofield, the high school queen bee who is determined to become "Blossom Queen," and will do whatever it takes to earn that title. This queen bee is no Regina George or Heather Duke, though. She's not even a Sandi Griffin or Quinn Morgendorffer. Yes, she's a diva, but she's hardly a total bitch. Early on, we learn that her quest to be blossom queen is an effort to forge a connection to her mother who died when she was a little kid, and was herself a blossom queen in the 1980's.
So where's the Daria connection? Well, Josh decides to enter a student film festival and the subject of his movie is Miss Schoefield, the rich popular girl who seems to get everything she wants in life, with the emphasis on "seems." During the making of the movie, her desire to maintain that stuck-up persona of hers slowly erodes, and her true intellectual colors begin to show. At the same time, the would-be blossom queen takes advantage of the head film-geek's deep-seated desire to be popular, and actually makes it work. Everybody sees that they're falling for each other, no matter how much they both try to deny it. His mother, her father, his friends, her friends, the girl he wants, her idiot jock trophy boyfriend, and quite possibly his teacher.
Unfortunately, there have been some fans of the book who complain about elements that were left out. I've heard the same complaints about movie adaptations of "How My Private, Personal Journal Became a Bestseller," "Holes," "Ella Enchanted," "Maniac Magee," and "The Power of One," among others. And I've never invalidated their grievances, but if their goal is to get people interested in the books these movies originated from, it could actually work for me. One also can't deny that the chemistry between real-life boyfriend and girlfriend Porkrop & Hyland works well on screen. And you know that since this is a DCOM, things will work out for the two main characters one way or another. So maybe it doesn't meet the standards of the book, but as a DCOM it's clearly above average.
