Review of Crossroads

Introduction

With Eminem’s debut film just about to come out with generally good reviews, it seems relevant to review Crossroads, the Britney Spears epic released last year. Like in “8 Miles”, this is a vehicle purposefully made for a music star, and contains various song routines (her cover of “I Love Rock and Roll”, “I’m not a Girl not yet a Woman”).

Video

As you would expect from a recent release, the picture is pretty flawless. The level of detail remains high throughout the film, the colours are vibrant and the print is pretty much perfect.

Audio

The soundtrack is in DD 5.1 and is adequate to the film’s needs. The dialogue and music scenes come across clearly, but there is no really bassy scenes to show off your sub.

Features

There is quite a reassuringly substantial amount of extra features here for you Britney fans. First up is a 26min long featurette ‘The Making of Crossroads: 40 Days With Britney’. Whilst there is nothing more I’d like to do than spend 40 days with Britney, unfortunately this featurette disappointed me and concentrates on the making of the film and singing routines instead of the highlight of the film, Britney dancing in her underwear. Nevertheless, the featurette goes into a fair level of detail on the backstage making-of and contains many talking head interviews, although is way too back-slappy for me. The extra ‘First in Line:Inside the Crossroads Premiere’ I can only guess at from its title, as I received a test disc which locked up on my player when I tried to play this. And there is also an 11min featurette on how to make T-shirts as shown in the film, which I guess is quite cool for any one who want to imitate the rather skimpy clothing style of Britney.

Next there is a selection of deleted scenes with each clip introduced by the director. These scenes are of decent quality and in widescreen. Another feature is ‘Break Through Britney’, which is one of those extras where you can activate Britney sharing her “personal memories” through the film.

To round up this impressive bunch (or terrible bunch, if you didn’t enjoy the film) is a video-editing feature, photo gallery, TV spots and trailers and music videos. You can also play the film accompanied by a commentary from the producer, director and writer of Crossroads.

Conclusion

Whilst I cannot say in any sense of the word that this is a good film because of its sickly saccharine sweetness, it is precisely because of this reason that makes it difficult to hate it too. The plot is predictable and ropey (although one small ‘twist’ does redeem it slightly) and the dialogue absolutely atrocious – one nightmarish poetry-reading scene in particular will be hard to erase from my memory. However, considering the poor script she chose and the fact that the screenwriter overplayed to her music background, Britney comes across as quite a decent actress, and certainly acquits herself well in more emotional scenes (dialogue notwithstanding).

Overall though I would not recommend this film to anyone over the age of 15 unless you have a particular fancy for Ms. Spears, sexual or otherwise!