About a third of the way into 'The Bling
Ring' - maybe less; it's a mercifully short film - a couple of over privileged
teens decide to break into Paris Hilton's palatial LA residence. Entry is
effected thanks to the cat-walk strutting heiress leaving a key under the door
mat. The majority of viewers at the screening I attended groaned or
face-palmed. Someone muttered, loudly, "No fucking way." Reading up
on the background - yup, we're in "based on a true story" territory -
it transpired this actually happened. This pair of designer-clotheshorse
douchebags - later joined by various in-crowd buddies - were able repeatedly to
break into the house of Hilton and rip off clothes and jewellery worth hundreds
of thousands because Paris Hilton left a
key under her door mat.
As the film progresses, more lamentable
security lapses come to light, notably Audrina Partridge, Orlando Bloom, Rachel
Bilson and Lindsay Lohan's inability to simply lock their doors before they
leave the premises. Nor, it would seem, does anyone who lives in Hollywood
Thus the
walk-in-marvel-at-the-designer-goods-walk-out-with-said-goods approach of our
happy band of douchebags, all of whom had names and were played by people I'd
never heard of before (except for Emma Watson who, to be perfectly honest with
you, was the only reason I bothered with the film), but after a very short
while I really didn't care and looking the cast up on IMDb hardly seems worth
it for a 400 word review.
The big problem with 'The Bling Ring' is
that, in depicting the actions of a bunch of vacuous nobodies obsessed with
vacuous celebrities, the film becomes equally vacuous. This needn't have been
the case, and a more satirical script and a sharper directorial approach could
have made for an excoriating study of materialism and the dubious lure of
celebrity culture. There are a few moments, particularly towards the end as the
gang are unmasked and brought to trial, where writer/director Sofia Coppola
comes close to engaging with the material with some degree of focus, but it's a
case of too little too late. Whatever interest the last half hour generates,
the first hour of 'The Bling Ring', with its desperately trendy soundtrack and
oooh-look-at-me visuals, is little more than 'Hipster Douchebag: The Movie'.
(Oh, and to whoever designed the poster: it’s
B&Es they’re pulling, not heists. Don’t try to dignify douchebaggery.)
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