You can usually rely on the content tap over at Netflix HQ to deliver a steady stream of new movies and TV shows into our homes, but sometimes what drips out isn’t so amazing. Today, Netflix has added just one new movie to the service, and it’s a film that’s generally considered one of the worst of the 2000s. So, what is this cinematic monstrosity we speak of? We’re talking about 2007’s Bratz: The Movie.
Based on the now unpopular toy line of the same name, Bratz: The Movie follows four high school girls as they engage in teenage drama you won’t care about even if you’re a teenage girl. The film was panned upon release, sitting at a lowly 10% on the Tomatometer (with a 46% Audience Score). Critics described it as “insipid,” “derivative,” “cloying” and “bad even by the low standards of its genre.”
Lest you think that these are merely snooty film critics offended that this isn’t The Godfather, even Bratz fans hate Bratz: The Movie. Audience reviews say “they made Yasmine look horrible and she was the prettiest doll. Horrible, awful, disgusting. Waste of money and time,” and “everything interesting about the Bratz was removed and replaced with flimsy, stereotypical backstories.”
Bratz: The Movie went on to be a box office bomb for Lionsgate, making back just half of its $20 million budget in North America and going on to be nominated for 5 Golden Raspberry Awards. After that, it was rightly forgotten, until now.
So, could Netflix’s resurrection of the film finally be the moment Bratz: the Movie receives a critical re-evaluation as a snapshot of pre-financial crash adolescent femininity struggling to define itself in a suffocating materialist world? Nah.
Let’s just hope this came in a bargain bin bundle of movie rights that Netflix picked up. My advice is to cast it back to the depths from where it came.
