Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Clothes are cute, comedy’s lame in tweener-doll idiocy

Bratz: The Movie (opens Aug. 3)

(PG; 95 minutes)

If you’re a doll-loving girl age 8 to 14 (you all read us, don’t you?) and you’ve had Bratz in your toy trove, this movie is made for you.

Everyone else, run away.

“Bratz: The Movie” is a mindless but cutely clothed pastiche of other teen and tween flicks. With its high-school setting and a plot about cliques, snobbery and idiotic regimentation, it artlessly steals slices from ”Clueless,” “Mean Girls,” “Bring It On” and “Legally Blonde,” without offering improvement on any of them.

Four cute unknowns — Nathalia Ramos, Janel Parrish, Logan Browning and Skyler Shaye — star as BFFs who discover that in high school, your lifelong buds become less important than your individual interests. One girl’s a cheerleader, one’s a science nerd, one’s an athlete and the fourth is a very shy singer.

As they face the horror of growing apart, they face a common enemy. The campus queen is a blond witch named Meredith Baxter Dimly, played as an empty-headed, egomaniacal sadist by Chelsea Staub. This girl is so spoiled that she wins the Carry Nation High School talent contest every year — mainly because she gets to select all the other entrants. You can see where this will end up, but it’s a painful process unless you are just fascinated by fashion.

Friendship is the noble value being pushed here, but it’s done so superficially that the message is buried in upscale rags and flatlining jokes.

We give it a D.

See BobRossMovies.com for better movie ideas.