Hermione Granger in da club!! The Bling Ring is about a group of teenage kleptomaniac so obsessed with seeing and being seen, that they decided to perform a little breaking and entering of celebrity homes (Orlando Bloom, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan among others). Writer/Director Sofia Coppola wants this movie about vapid youth to be about something deeper; however, the movie’s holes are crater sized due to obsessive repetition and lack of character evolution.
Told in flashback, the Bling Ring starts when Marc (Israel Broussard) goes to the dropout high school and meets Rebecca (Katie Chang). Mark, desperate for friends and notoriety, follows Rebecca around as she tells him about how she likes to break into people’s houses when they are out of town. This crime among friends escalates when they decide to invade Paris Hilton’s house when they find out she is hosting a party out of town. Soon these wanna-be D list celebs are joined by friends Chloe (Claire Julien), Sam (Taissa Farmiga), and Nicki (Emma Watson), who comes from a very new age Californian home.
The Bling Ring suffers from repetition which dilutes any sort of message it wants to send. The escalation from car to home invasion is nicely realized, but as more celebrity homes are invaded, the character development and evolution stops. The wet blanket friend remains as such, and none of the other girls really distinguish themselves too much when they rob. Not until they are caught do more character traits come out. The Bling Ring might have done better showing a full arc from beginning to aftermath of its multiple characters to give each more substance, or just simply focus on the motivation of each robbery to give the audience more background on what is going on.
This movie is wonderfully shot; many takes last at least 10 minutes in some of the victims’ actual houses. These homes make the robbers seem less horrible since the people they are robbing sometimes showcase greater sociopathic tendencies than the robbers themselves. Multiple shots from computer cameras effectively showcase the fame aspect of the bling ring’s thefts. It is not enough to break in to the celeb houses; they want to make sure people know about it as well via facebook or text messaging. The club scenes are the correct mixture of flashing lights and drug induced ecstasy. The insta high explains why the Bling Ring would aspire to the celeb lifestyle.
Emma Watson and Leslie Mann are the big names in this cast. As the mother/daughter combo with a fascinating relationship, Watson and Mann work very well when they share the scenes together; it is a shame they do not get more screen time. Israel Broussard does a good job playing the new kid in over his head; he gets a nice little YouTube homage showing off his dance moves and clothes. Katie Chang is fine as the ring leader, but she needed more fleshing out or more mystery to be used as the lead character. Other cast members just blend into the background.
The Bling Ring should have been better had it had a been anchored around Watson and Mann. As is, it is a solid showcase of a culture simultaneously bound by nothing and aspiring to nothing. Maybe that’s the point, that any attempt to draw something more out of these people is just a hollow endeavor, which is a very scary thought for the future.