LOL (2012)

It has been fifteen years since I was in high school. That’s nearly half my life ago, though it doesn’t feel like it. Sure, I’ve got the basic aches and pains of getting older. I have a full-time job that pays me to be there, rather than school I had to pay for. Things are much different than when I was a teenager. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that teenagers treat every inconvenience, whether major or minor, as the most catastrophic disaster to ever happen. Many adults often do that, as well, but it’s more a stereotypical teenager thing.

One movie that was built around that teenage stereotype was LOL. The 2012 teenage sort-of-romance movie was directed by Lisa Azuelos and was a remake of her 2008 French movie LOL (Laughing Out Loud). Lola (Miley Cyrus) returned to school after summer break to find that her boyfriend Chad (George Finn) cheated on her with Ashley (Ashley Greene). She broke it off with him and began pursuing Kyle (Douglas Booth) after they realized they had feelings for each other. Lola’s mom, Anne (Demi Moore), wasn’t doing any better with her love life. She was sleeping with her ex-husband, Allen (Thomas Jane), while falling for a police officer, James (Jay Hernandez). One other blossoming relationship was between Emily (Ashley Hinshaw), Lola’s best friend, and Wen (Adam Sevani), the guy that any of the teenage girls would be embarrassed to be seen with. It was a lot of romance that might not have been romance and might have just been horniness.

There wasn’t much of a story arc to LOL. It was a movie built around the romantic lives of teenagers without leading to anything. The audience was brought into the teenage drama, watched everyone overreact to everything, and was taken back out without any sort of satisfaction about what unfolded. It felt like watching a teenager’s life unfold, rather than watching a compelling cinematic story.

LOL felt like it was written about teenagers by teenagers. Those stereotypical young whipper-snappers that the older generations, mine included now, complain about. Their hormones ran rampant. Their stances on anything never truly lasted. They rebelled for the simple sake of always putting their own desires over everyone else’s. They hadn’t yet learned to adult. They hadn’t matured beyond their selfish, teenage selves.

All those traits could be seen in Lola. She was an impulsive person, not a girl, not yet a woman. Her young romance with Chad caused her to graffiti the girls’ washroom at school. She immediately scratched over that when she found out Chad cheated on her. It was understandable, but still impulsive. Both sides of the graffiti were impulsive. As was her choice to essentially roofie her grandmother so she could throw a party while her mom was out of the apartment. Or there was the part where she made out with a childhood friend to make Kyle jealous after a misunderstanding. One that I will now get into.

The most apparent impulsive, self-centered part of the character, however, involved a little trip to the school washroom that didn’t involve graffiti. Lola was looking for Kyle and was told he might be in the washroom. She walked in and heard two people having sex. She immediately thought one of the two was Kyle, and she assumed the other was Ashley for three reasons. One, Ashley had been who Chad cheated on her with. Two, there was a bag that looked like Ashley’s. Three, she asked Ashley if she had been in the washroom and Ashley said yes. All signs pointed to Ashley. But it wasn’t Ashley. It was Emily who owned the bag in that stall.

Emily was embarrassed to be caught in the stall because she was having sex with Wen, and didn’t tell Lola. Lola broke up with Kyle, ten seconds after leaving the washroom, even though he didn’t even come from the washroom, because Ashley said she was in there. Kyle’s abusive father stole his phone, which Lola didn’t know. She assumed he was ghosting her. This infuriated her more.

Everyone soon went on a school trip to Paris, which was actually not quite Paris but some farmland outside the city, and Emily fessed up to being the one in the washroom. Lola immediately got mad. Then Emily said she was embarrassed because it was Wen, and the two immediately made up. It was a whiplash of emotions. Lola then hooked up with Kyle as quickly as she could in some not-quite-Paris host’s guest bedroom. That was a lot of teenage impulse and horniness within two scenes.

The rest of the movie was Anne finding Lola’s diary and seeing a condom wrapper in it, getting in a fight with Lola, realizing she liked sex too, and being okay with Lola having sex. It was no less whiplash than the Paris stuff. By the end of the movie, I could only throw my hands up in the air in an exaggerated shrug as the credits rolled. What was the point? Nothing really happened. Nothing of importance.

Before getting into the plot and how insufferable of an impulsive character Lola was, I mentioned that there wasn’t really an arc to the story of LOL. When I say that, I don’t mean the story. There was a point a and a point b and the movie went from a to b. Lola was in love then wasn’t then was and had sex. Anne was in an on-and-off relationship of meaningless sex, then found meaning in a relationship with a police officer (I didn’t really dive into that part of the movie all that much). There wasn’t really a character arc for Lola, the main character and narrator. She didn’t grow as a character. She just did things.

If I had to give a quick, succinct description of LOL, it would be that it was a movie told through the lens of a teenage girl’s diary. I don’t even know where to start on explaining what that means. I’ve never read a teenage girl’s diary. I’ve never seen a teenage girl’s diary in the wild and, if I had, it would be a massive invasion of privacy to read through it. I’m not going to do that. This diary just happened to belong to one of the most selfish, stereotypical teenagers who thought their relationship problems were the most important thing in the world.

LOL wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It was competently filmed, directed, and edited. The only real faults were the characters and the overall writing. There should be some growth to a main character, something they learn, something that changes them. That wasn’t apparent while watching the movie. Other movies that have tackled the idea of teenage girls wanting to be sexually active have done so in a way where it (not necessarily the act, but the pursuit of it or the aftermath) had consequences. There weren’t any consequences in this one. The relationship drama was presented as super important, but had no real substance. I guess that’s like the real teenage stereotype.

I don’t know what the life of a teenager is like in 2024. Again, it’s been fifteen years since I was in high school. That’s the entire lifetime of some of the kids going through that right now. I do think that teenagers probably still act kind of like the ones in this movie, though maybe not in the same sort of Chicago big-city way if they’re not in Chicago. I’m not one hundred percent sure, though. What I do know is that it doesn’t make for a very entertaining movie.

It’s time to finish this post off with some notes:

• LOL was the third Sunday “Bad” Movie to feature Fisher Stevens. He was previously in Movie 43 and Super Mario Bros.
• The other three-timer this week was Thomas Jane, who has previously been in Money Plane and Breach.
• Four actors from Alex Cross were in LOL. They were Elias Bahri, Ron Causey, Pennie-Marie Hawkins, and Eric Tuchelske.
• Marlo Thomas was in both LOL and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.
• Loretta Higgins returned from Crossover to appear in LOL.
• LOL was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Jay Hernandez. He was also in Torque.
• Gina Gershon had a small role in LOL after having a major role in Showgirls.
• You might have noticed that Demi Moore made a second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week, after already being in Nothing But Trouble.
• Sex and the City 2 featured Miley Cyrus, the star of LOL.
• Nora Dunn made a second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in LOL. She was previously seen in Southland Tales.
• Finally, Ashley Greene appeared in both LOL and Yoga Hosers.
• Have you seen LOL? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments, or find me on BlueSky or Threads.
• If you have an idea for something I should watch for Sunday “Bad” Movies, hit me up in the comments or on social media. I’m always open to suggestions.
• Alright. Up next will be a franchise post, since it will be official post 540. I’m going to take a quick look at three movies in the Puppet Master franchise that form a sort of trilogy. Puppet Master: Axis of Evil, Puppet Master: Axis Rising, and Puppet Master: Axis Termination. I may touch on a few of the others, since I’ve seen them all in the past year or so. But the post will be for those three, specifically. I’ll see you when I get that one up and out.