Girl Asleep is a movie that is full of nostalgia from school, and not the girl kinds. However, Girl Asleep is great and has a lot of drama I assume teenagers face currently in school. However, this movie is meant to take place in the 90’s – I don’t know what teenagers went through in the 1990s, but I assume not a lot changed from when I was in school.
‘Girl Asleep’ stars Bethany Whitmore as Greta, a girl that gets bullied, a lot – high school girls can be so cruel – that forms a friendship with Elliott – who also gets bullied, a lot.
Based on her acclaimed Windmill Theatre production, Rosemary Myers’ feature debut is a journey into the absurdities of the teenage mind. Navigating puberty in 1970s suburbia, Greta (Bethany Whitmore) doesn’t want to grow up. Her mum is embarrassing and her sister disinterested. Geeky Elliott (Harrison Feldman) is her only ally. Greta’s surprise 15th birthday party is on track to be the worst night of her life – until she’s flung into an odd fairy-tale universe with a warrior princess (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). Filled with wild musical flourishes and moments of colourful theatrics, Girl Asleep resists the adult world as much as its lead character.
Greta’s parents Conrad and Janet are weird, too. I mean, not as weird as any other parents, but Janet seems more interested in caring about her personal image and getting hit on by Genevieve’s boyfriend Adam than she does about Greta.
The movie starts off as your typical high school movie where the new girl gets picked on by the “cool” group of girls, it kind of felt like Mean Girls. However, during Greta’s 15th birthday the movie turns into a weird thriller-like movie when Greta gets electrocuted by a music box and wakes up to something waring a mask, and she runs off into the forrest to grab a mixtape that the thing stole.
Greta meets up with some girl – earlier in the movie, Greta mentioned how she formed a relationship with a pen pal in the forrest, I assume it’s the same girl. While with this girl, Greta seems to go through a time warp of seeing Elliott as an adult, not being able to find her home, and also a whole lot of other weird things. She also gets in a fight with those three bully girls from school while in her dream, which was fun. Who doesn’t like a good ol’ fight scene?
It turns out she was actually just dreaming about all these things that were happening, due to being knocked out by the electric shock. She wakes up and has a touching moment with her sister about how young girls can be horrible.
Greta and Elliott change attire – for some reason – even though Elliott proclaims he looks better in a dress than Greta does, which I laughed. Greta actually looked great in that blue tux.
Greta returns to the party to blow out the candle on her cake as the movie ends.
‘Girl Asleep’ was a fun movie that actually had a lot of different genres in it; comedy, drama, suspense and action. I also really enjoyed the bad jokes by Conrad at the dinner table. Poop jokes never get old.
Steve's Words and Other Things 