The Bling Ring (2013) Review

Welcome to Coppola Week at Cinema Parrot Disco! I just so happened to watch several movies directed by both Francis Ford & Sofia Coppola in the past several months so I figured “What the hell – I might as well review them all in the same week and pretend I’m organized & shit and that I actually planned it that way!”. So, I set it for the week of Mr Coppola’s birthday (this coming Thursday).

Here we go! I’ll be reviewing two from each of them this week. Oh, and don’t go expecting big stuff like The Godfathers… I saw those years ago. These are all Coppola movies that I only saw for the very first time recently. Let’s start with a fairly recent one directed by Sofia:

The Bling Ring (2013)

Directed & Written by Sofia Coppola

Based on The Suspects Wore Louboutins by Nancy Jo Sales

Starring: Israel Broussard, Katie Chang, Taissa Farmiga, Claire Julien, Emma Watson, Leslie Mann

Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB)
Inspired by actual events, a group of fame-obsessed teenagers use the internet to track celebrities’ whereabouts in order to rob their homes.

My Opinion:

This had a lot of potential as the true story is rather fascinating. This could’ve been a deep & meaningful piece exploring the worrying way in which so many teenagers today are extremely shallow & are overly obsessed with celebrities and with possessions. But it’s not! The film feels as shallow as its asshole teenagers and the asshole celebrities they stole enough designer handbags from to feed a small country. (With, like, the proceeds had they sold the handbags. I’m bad with words… You know what I mean!)

To be fair, I don’t think it’s really Sofia Coppola’s fault. I can see why she’d want to make a movie about this story but I think it’s quite hard to make a movie where every character is so completely hateful (I need to see The Hateful Eight to see if this statement is still true!). Well, okay – the one male involved in the robberies isn’t entirely hateful, which was was good since this movie desperately needed that one person who seemed human. But I have to say that Emma Watson must be a really good actress because I hated her character with a passion! Her character is the perfect example of everything that’s wrong with spoiled, self-obsessed Western youth.

As for the true story, I’ve not read the original article this movie is based on & not looked into the real people and how closely this movie portrayed things. I just don’t care enough to bother. It’s hard to really feel anything for anyone in this story. It’s basically about the “haves” stealing from the “have-even-mores”. I don’t know if this is how it really was but I got the impression that they were able to rob Paris Hilton more than once as, when you have hundreds of designer bags & shoes & pieces of jewelry, you don’t even notice when some go missing. That’s really quite sad. What these teenagers did was of course very wrong & a crime in need of punishment but, with all the horrible stuff going on in the world, no one is exactly going to cry over some celebrities having been robbed of a few possessions.

But despite the subject matter, I didn’t hate this movie. I guess I just wanted a little something more from it but it was interesting seeing just how easily these teenagers broke into these celebrity houses. You would think there would be loads of alarms, locks, etc! Never mind their possessions – aren’t celebrities worried about their personal safety? I’ll say that it seemed these teenagers broke into these houses, especially Paris Hilton’s which they kept going back to, just as much to hang out & get a taste of living the celebrity lifestyle as to steal things and that’s the only time I almost felt a little sorry for them & was reminded that they’re really just kids.

I think I was just disappointed as I really love Coppola’s Lost In Translation and think The Virgin Suicides is quite a beautiful work of art. Those films have so much style (and fantastic soundtracks! I love when Coppola puts a lot of effort into the music used in her movies). The Bling Ring just tells its story in a very straightforward way and feels much different from other Sofia Coppola movies I’ve seen. There’s nothing actually wrong with the film and I have to say I somewhat enjoyed watching it as, like the teenagers, I think a lot of us are at least a little fascinated with celebrities and the lifestyles they lead. Hey, I admit that I used to watch Cribs on MTV! 😉 This movie is a bit like watching an episode of that, in a way, and I did like seeing inside the homes & wondered how close they made them to the actual homes that were robbed. Like, does Paris Hilton actually have her face plastered all over her walls & on her throw pillows?! Lol. Bizarre. I suppose I just can’t stand the type of people this movie portrays but, once it got past what felt like 45 minutes of the characters taking duckface selfies, the movie was half over anyway as it’s quite short. A shallow film about shallow people but worth watching if you’re interested in the story and bear in mind that you’re not going to get anything deep from it.

My Rating: 6/10