Dirty Girl (2011)

What makes it different from others?

Pretty Good

Perfectly adorable

hyped garbage

What an absolute gem this film is... with a title like that I was prepared for another teenage-bad-decisions movie but in fact, this was soo much more. The film shows how bad decisions made by parents affects children. Parenting is really no-joke and the fact that you need to support your offspring through thick and thin is what it is all about.Juno Temple is excellent as the lead character and equally impressive is Jeremy Dozier as "Clarke". The interaction as Joan, the sack of flour (given as a class assignment to the lead characters) is simply heart stirring. I liked it soo much that I contributed the missing dialogue to the "Quotes" section on IMDB. This movie is far better than the current "Lady Bird" film which Hollywood is going ga-ga over! It's unfortunate that such a brilliant movie did not get the credit it deserved. Please do not miss this gem of a flick!

This could have been a witty period take on coming of age and finding your identity (a sort of Indi 'dirty' Pretty in Pink or Can't buy me love'), but I was distracted by the claim of a 1987 setting. The 1982 hair cuts and 1977 clothing made the production feel like it was run by a group of high school students without access to google! There was so much social, political and fashion change going on at the end of the 80s that failure to contextualise the story properly made this poorly written film feel flat and pointless as well as failing an otherwise great cast. Definitely, not one to recommend. I would go back to original films of the era for now, but also give some of the TV set in that era a go as well for new perspectives on the time.

Dirty Girl (2010)The movie starts with such stupidity and what seems like terrible acting and movie-making you're going to want to quit. Unless you're a high school kid looking for cheap thrills (and there ain't anything wrong with that--it's just a style thing). But hang in there. This movie gets better and better and better. By the end all the hilarity crashes down to a weepy finale--more convincing than it has any right to be after all the zany stuff prior.It's mostly about two high school kids who don't fit in. They seem like opposites and we all know how fun opposite are in movie comedies. One is slutty girl Danielle who has a dysfunctional home life and who is wild partly because she's bored by school and is (it turns out) smarter than the cliché would have it. The other is an overweight kid Clarke who knows he's gay and who is afraid of coming out but everyone knows already anyway. He also has a dysfunctional family, and the movie eventually also clashes the two sets of parents (and accessory kin).The plot moves fast and turns into a crisis and then a road trip. All good stuff. And it's filmed with an openminded low-budget freedom that makes it fun and doesn't always worry about verisimilitude. (The two leads are in a family planning class, for example, and are given a bag of flour they have to treat as their new baby. The bag has a face drawn on it in magic marker, and the face changes depending on what's going on around it. Her--it's a girl.)But mostly it's the acting of Danielle (Juno Temple), and Clarke (Jeremy Dozier), that makes it all stick. Temple in particular is just oozing and exploding with energy and dramatic screen presence, whether being saucy or sassy, fun or sad. She takes over every scene and you want her to. Danielle drives a red 1965 Mustang convertible (of course--what else?). She knows what matters and who's a jerk and doesn't put up with crap. She's troubled, but all along you know she's basically right, and you end up totally on her side. And on Clarke's side, too, as he tries to make sense of his world now that someone accepts him without even blinking.Eventually there is a deliberate Hollywood ending, complete with tears and spotlights on the stars. It's a farce, I suppose, or a silly over the top romp, and there are going to be people who never let it click. Humor is fickle. But once I was a good half hour in (and it took that long, unfortunately), but once I was, there was no going back. It's worth sticking it out. Very worth it.

This movie offered a bit of everything. Humor, emotions, feel-good and even some awkward moments. It started off with a humoristic touch and went to a bit more drama, and even some emotional scenes.. I really sympathized during those scenes. I was surprised, because I didn't think this movie would stand out the way it did. For me personally the expectations weren't all that big, I thought it would be just another sort of light slapstick comedy. But it offers a very good story and characters you actually begin to sympathize with.Eventually it is a true feel-good movie with a nice but somewhat cliché plot. To end all this, I'm really taking my hat off for the acting. I would say it's almost a definitely must-see