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Guess what comes out on DVD/Netflix today? Make It Happen, a Flashdance-but-with-burlesque movie that shockingly (for real), shockingly, did not make it happen to big screens (at least in America) and will be seen for the first time by American audiences on DVD. What went wrong with Make It Happen? From the trailer, it doesn’t look any worse than any teen dance movie. My theory is that what doomed this film was the casting of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who “suffers” from something called “Smart-face.” Her face is simply too suggestive of a high IQ to, like, no offense to anyone, play a professional burlesque dancer. She should be solving Vatican crimes or, like, hacking. She just doesn’t have that blank, dead-eyed look that teens look for in their dance movie heroines. But aside from that, I know plenty of people who would gladly watch this movie, ESPECIALLY if they heard it was bad.
In a world where Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is a (deserved) genre-defining slumber party dance movie classic, there’s no reason Make It Happen can’t do good DVD business. In fact, I predict a totally horribly awesome straight-to-DVD sequel. It could happen.
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‘Smart-face”
I love you.
This will find a place in my To-Be-DVRed file… There’s nothing wrong with pretty smart-faced girls performing a special dance rooted in burlesque…
What doomed this movie was they they finished post-production JUST in time for the marketing of “Step It Up 2 The Streetz” or whatever it was called — exact same formula with almost the exact same poster and marketing, with the same guy getting writing credits for both of them. The “Step It Up” billboards were everywhere and it would have made it impossible to release (this was in the spring)… it got shelved all summer, and then they released it in the UK and it did pretty abysmally. I am guessing they looked at the UK box office results, looked at all the newly announced Oscar Contenders’ release dates, and decided “fuck it, no chance”.
But I prefer your theory that Mary is too brilliant to be stuck in shitty teen movies. I honestly feel Mary appeals to a slightly higher group than the L.C.D. of movie-consumers…