Girl in Progress (2012)

Very well executed

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Girl in Progress is a film feature that stars Eva Mendes and Cierra Ramirez together with Matthew Modine and Patricia Arquette.It is about the coming-of-age into maturity of a young woman who is taught interestingly by her teen-age daughter.Patricia Riggen directs.Grace is an immature single mom who is consumed by her occupation to pay the bills and to provide for her daughter,Ansiedad as well as her affair with a married man in the person of Dr.Hartford.But when Ansiedad's English teacher, Ms. Armstrong introduces her students to classic coming-of-age stories, Ansiedad is inspired to skip adolescence and jump-start her life to rebel against her mother due to the lack of attention she receives from her. She enlists the help of her loyal friend, Tavita to plot her shortcut to become an adult immediately.She designs a flow chart to remind her to indulge in a wide range of bad behavior such as drinking, stealing, failing tests, losing her virginity in a one-night stand and cruelly taunting her best friend.Her ultimate goal becomes to run away from home and move to New York on her own.But later,Ms.Armstrong takes her to the Principal's Office wherein Grace meets her daughter.After an argument,we get to see Ansiedad once again goes back and act as a teen-ager once again and Grace decides to change for the better for her daughter's sake.Although the film has an interesting premise,it was definitely contrived and does go far away from clichés.Aside from that,it does not give us any reason to care for the characters from they are far from being heartwarming.It could have been a better film if it wasn't implausible and if the story has never been used over and over again.Added to that,we also get limited humor and it fails to elicit laughter from most of its comedic scenes.The only positives in the film is Mendes' likability as Grace and Ramirez's portrayal of Ansiedad.

Now I know, you're already scrolling by this review thinking "She gave it a five, it must suck." Don't do that. I'm giving this movie a five for three reasons. One) It's slow to start. You never really feel anything for the characters until late in the middle. The only character that you actually feel compassion towards is Tavita (Raini Rodriguez). At least, that's how it was for me. For a long time, you're watching the movie but you're not really invested and you're only vaguely interested in what might happen next. Two) Some of the plot lines, like many in Hollywood, are a little far fetched. The entire Crab Shack is ridiculous because no self respecting owner would leave "all he has" to a woman he doesn't 100% trust. The theft was ridiculous as well. (Including the way "Mission Impossible" "solves" it.) The party scene with the movie's "mean girl" was a little out there (and by a little, I mean, in what world would an entire party throw drinks on a girl for having sex?)Three) Every time it would have a moment that you think "Dang, that was actually pretty moving" or "Wow, that was some impressive acting" it gets ruined moments later by an needless line or sequence. For instance, near the end when Grace is pulling Ansiedad off the bus, it's fantastic. The line "I'm not letting you go" is powerful and Eva delivers it beautifully. But then the seemingly endless chase scene takes away from the overall impact of the fight and resolution. Even after these three faults in the movie, I enjoyed it. I think Eva was fantastic as a mother who doesn't quite have it together. There were scenes that brought a tear to my eye and that made me laugh. The star players were Eva Mendes, Patricia Arquette, and Raini Rodriguez. There were some moments where Cierra Ramirez really nailed the misunderstood teenager, and others where she kind of made you cringe.Overall, I would watch this movie again. I might even buy it, if I found it in the 5 dollar bin at Walmart. Is it award worthy? No. Will it change your life? Probably not. But it does have some heart and some humor.

I watched this movie last night and thought it was a great movie.The movie starts off slow and a bit quirky. At times it even feels like it is trying to hard to be something its not. Then somewhere in the middle, it drops the quirky and the story develops. I became invested and began to care for the characters. The acting was good. Both main actresses do a great job in their roles as mother and daughter. As an educator myself, I see these types of mothers and daughters almost every school year. It was nice seeing their story be told and also one from Latin roots. I would recommend this movie because at the end of it all, you leave the movie with some thoughts and emotions tied to the characters. Good film.

The idea of a teenage daughter rebelling against her mother under the guise of gaining independence is compelling. The fatal flaw of "Girl in Progress" is that this idea is not taken seriously until the final act, at which point we've been so turned off by the plot and characters that we no longer care. It really is shocking how badly this movie is structured and how poorly the characters are developed; what should have been a poignant and insightful generational story has been reduced to an implausible and inconsistent mess. It starts out at the level of a second-rate sitcom, one that makes the dread mistake of believing the jokes it's telling are actually funny. It then makes a wild shift in tone and becomes shamelessly sentimental. This is not to suggest that it turns dour and depressing; it simply becomes mechanical, with all the emotional loose ends tied up into neat little knots.Taking place in Seattle, it tells the story of a teenager named Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez) and her mother, Grace (Eva Mendes), who got pregnant at seventeen, was kicked out of the house by her tyrannical mother, never finished high school, never got married, and now works as both a maid and a waitress in a seafood shack. She talks the talk about going back to night school, getting her diploma, and moving towards a computer career. That's actually the reason she and Ansiedad moved to the Pacific Northwest in the first place. The thing is, they have moved numerous times in the past several years. And Grace is no closer to starting night school. What's the holdup? Basically, she has refused to grow up. She has had several men in her life and is currently dating a married gynecologist (Matthew Modine). One could make the case that she's fun to be around, but she really isn't there for Ansiedad the way a parent should be.Ansiedad, obviously aware of her mother's caviler attitude about everything, rebels in school by making inappropriate class presentations. Then her English teacher (Patricia Arquette) introduces to her the concept of the coming-of-age story, and this is the point at which the film goes spectacularly wrong. In learning about such stories, in which a character or set of characters transitions from childhood to adulthood, Ansiedad decides that she has been a kid long enough and that she must accelerate her journey towards maturity and independence. She researches coming-of-age stories extensively, especially in regards to the formula they tend to follow. From that, she compiles a list of life experiences that she must go. She then makes a creative-looking arrow chart and enlists her best friend, Tavita (Raini Rodriguez), to help her cross every item off the list.In following it, Ansiedad proves she knows absolutely nothing about authentic coming-of-age stories. Her methods are cruel, manipulative, dangerous, and quite frankly, stupid. Had director Patricia Riggen and screenwriter Hiram Martinez been aware of this, perhaps this plot device would have worked. Alas, they initially treat it as a lighthearted comedy routine. Essentially, she believes she must go from being a "good girl" to a "bad girl," at which point she will miraculously come out the other side an adult. On the journey, she will join the chess club, dress nerdy, provoke the mean girl, manipulate her into friendship, start dressing as a bad girl, lose interest in school, catch the attention of the one boy who's a womanizing jerk, and ultimately lose her virginity to him. She will also pretend to dump Tavita by making fun of her weight and sneak into a nursing home just so that she can claim sickly old woman as her grandmother.Ansiedad is so desperate to go through these life experiences that she will steal money from her mother, lie to authority figures, and intentionally ruin her reputation. How could anyone in their right minds believe this to be suitable material for a comedy? This is just tactless and insensitive. This story needed to be in the hands of filmmakers who actually understand people, teenagers and adults alike. The characters in this story are about as authentic as three-dollar bills. By the time we reach the final act, at which point it becomes a bit more dramatic, the damage has already been done. We no longer have it within us to like them, or even to invest in them for dramatic purposes.Grace is the subject of a silly and barely developed subplot involving suddenly becoming the manager of the seafood shack and a busboy-turned-waiter nicknamed Mission Impossible (Eugenio Derbez), who can barely speak English but clearly has a thing for Grace. He does something for her, something that largely exists only in movies like this. His promise to correct his mistake is even less believable, if such a thing was even possible. Meanwhile, Grace continues to see her married lover on the sly, eventually figuring out that he's a sleazebag. We, of course, had figured that out as early as the first scene. If "Girl in Progress" is what counts for a coming-of-age story nowadays, we might be forced to go back to the drawing board. Its title isn't even deserving of the word "progress."-- Chris Pandolfi (www.atatheaternearyou.net)