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Despite the best efforts of an attractive cast, this fails to get off the ground, largely thanks to appalling direction by Sara ‘Mad Cows’ Sugarman – if you only see one Lindsay Lohan movie this summer, see Mean Girls instead.

Lindsay Lohan had a huge hit with Freaky Friday last year and it seems that studio execs have decreed her to be The Next Big Thing, teen-heroine wise. (Amanda Bynes and Hilary Duff must be gutted). At any rate, she has two high school movies opening within a few weeks of each other.

Sadly, the lesser of the two is opening first, so if you’re only going to see one Lindsay Lohan movie this summer, wait till June 11th and see Mean Girls instead.

High School Student With Delusions Of Superstardom

Lohan plays Lola Cep, a high school kid with delusions of superstardom, who sees herself as “a flamingo amongst the pigeons”. When her mother (Glenne Headly) does the unthinkable and moves the family from New York to New Jersey, Lola has to make a new start at her new high school. She quickly befriends nerdy Ella (Alison Pill, from Pieces of April), based on their mutual love of fictional British band Sidarthur.

Equally quickly she makes an enemy of Carla Santini (Megan Fox), her only rival for the lead role in the school’s upcoming musical version of Pygmalion: Eliza Rocks!

The plot itself is fairly tedious stuff and involves a trip to New York to see Sidarthur in concert, where Lola meets her idol, Stu Wolf (Adam Garcia) and talks some sense into him. However, because Wolf is obviously too old for her, the film gives her an ostensible love interest her own age (Eli Marianthal), but completely refuses to develop the character, thereby abandoning any interest in the romance angle of the plot.

Cast Best Thing About Film

The cast are easily the best thing about the film. Lohan is wonderful and even manages to make her precocious character likeable – she can’t help but shine, despite a clichéd script. She also, well, rocks in the singing and dancing sequences at the end. There’s also good support from both Alison Pill and Megan Fox, as well as Carol Kane, who steals pretty much every scene she’s in as the eccentric drama teacher Miss Baggoli.

Unfortunately, the cast are severely let down by appalling direction by Sara Sugarman, who crams the film with little directorial flourishes and fantasy sequences that add nothing. She also fumbles the ending, as well as including a ‘Chorus of Laptops’ number in ‘Eliza Rocks’ that beggars belief – it’s meant to be ‘cool’ but is more reminiscent of Spinal Tap-like pretension than anything else.

Ultimately, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is a disappointing film, despite the best efforts of the cast and Lohan’s undeniable star presence. Rest assured, the upcoming Mean Girls is a hundred times better – see that instead.