Sara Sugarman is from Wales. Her last film was the horrible Very Annie Mary. Her new horrible film is Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, based on the novel by Dyan Sheldon. As it is, the film is barely of a trifle of a movie. It serves more to further the profile of Lindsay Lohan than anything else. It's kind of a shame, because Lohan (The Parent Trap) did a remarkably good job in Freaky Friday, only to suffer through a bad script here. This is the type of films that tweener girls would probably enjoy at a slumber party, after all it has random scenes of jumping on beds and trying on clothes, but the characters are so obnoxious and boring that even they may be repelled.
Lohan is Mary Cep, or "Lola" as she prefers. Her mother Karen (Glenne Headly, Bartleby, What's the Worst That Could Happen?) moves the family from urban New York to suburban Dellwood, New Jersey, where Lola needs to renavigate the treacherous waters of high school. She instantly bonds with Ella (Alison Pill, Pieces of April, Perfect Pie) because of their love for the band Sid Arthur. Ella looks brainy and Lola dresses way too weird, so they instantly become outcasts and incur the wrath of Carla (Megan Fox), whose father happens to be the lawyer for Sid Arthur. The school is putting on a modern version of Pygmalion called Eliza Rocks, and Lola, who wants to be an actress, vies for the title role. She also learns that Sid Arthur is breaking up, and vows to make it into their final concert and speak to her idol, lead singer Stu Wolff (Adam Garcia, Kangaroo Jack, Riding in Cars with Boys).
This film is all over the place. Instead of a cohesive story, the plot goes from Lola adjusting to her new life, her competition with Carla, her attempts to get a ticket to Sid Arthur's concert and after party, and a love interest comes out of nowhere. Gail Parent (Cross My Heart) adapts the novel in a scattershot fashion, leaving out any discernible humor, and the result is that nobody is really rooting for Lola, or cares if she gets into the party or not. Her personality is her downfall. Lola wants to be an actress, so she's always 'acting.' She wants to make things more dramatic for effect, or just for fun.
A lot of this comes out in exaggerations or lies. She tells lies about her past to Ella to make her life seem more interesting, and it's only a matter of time before those lies come back to haunt her. This does not make her a sympathetic protagonist. She's rude to her mother, her teachers, and all these lies make her actually seem like a pretty dull person. The lack of anything remotely funny in the script certainly doesn't help things much. It just gives the viewer more time to ruminate on how annoying the Lola character is. Sugarman (Mad Cows) takes what seems like an easy task, making a movie for little girls, and ruins it. There are even Ally McBeal-like diversions into fantasy and song, which, like everything else, are much too distracting.