Crossroads: Press views

Crossroads: Has critics bolting for home

The UK press review Crossroads

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The Times

Crossroads isn't a road movie, it's a showbiz traffic jam, designed to slow down the movie crowds long enough to let Spears showcase her "acting" skills (she doesn't make the mistake of overplaying, but talks and moves like a drugged mental patient). It's not all bad. It's amusing to watch a movie which hates parents so openly (Britney's Dad is portrayed as a stuffy old doughnut while her mother is a nasty ice queen).

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The Observer

The virginal Lucy's looking for her long-lost mom in Arizona; the pregnant Mimi aims to audition for a record company in Los Angeles; the sophisticated African-American Kit plans to join her devious fiancé in California. Along the way, the girls refinance the trip on a karaoke night in Louisiana and Lucy writes the film's banal theme which has the refrain "I'm not a girl, yet not woman". Mimi miscarries in LA, but the movie has done that long before, though Britney's fans will be touched to see her losing her virginity as the sun sinks into the Pacific.

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The Independent

Crossroads for me will always mean a cut-price motel and that twanging Tony Hatch theme tune, memories that won't be supplanted by the sight of Britney Spears jiggling in her underwear at the start of her identically named debut movie. To be honest, that's the highlight of Crossroads, a perfunctory tale of a small-town ingénue who, via a makeover and the encouragement of her boyfriend (Anson Mount), becomes an overnight pop sensation. Goody for us! Not as terrible as Mariah Carey's vanity project Glitter, though that might not cut it as a quote for the poster.

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The Daily Telegraph

Directed ham-fistedly by Tamra Davis, this is a road movie that never lingers on the scenery. Why would it? Britney is the scenery. And that's bad news; to paraphrase one of her song titles, she's not a girl, not yet a movie star, more of a profit centre with an eternally bare midriff. And Crossroads? It's a void where a movie should be.

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London Evening Standard

Crossroads is a Britney Spears vehicle financed by her record label to manage her transition from a "safe" idol of pubescent girls to a sexy one for slightly older teens. She'll be lucky if they stick around that long. When the drift starts, her fame may be measured like pop diva Mariah Carey's in lost jobs rather than fans' tears.