Louise Redknapp is a pop singer and television presenter but is probably best known recently for being the darling of men's magazines, with her curvy size 8 figure always hailed as what makes her sexy. Here though, Louise decides to spend 30 days on a crash diet to get down to the infamous size zero (UK size 4). Her aim is to be able to talk with first hand knowledge of the effect that extreme dieting and being skinny has on your health. With medical care on hand, and family members worried but supportive Louise flies to LA in search of the best diet methods.
A strange film this one. Very much a crash diet spin on Super Size Me, it did worry me that it was from ITV because they are know for their crap celeb specials and such. The approach is a worthy one because the trend in the world of celebs and models is for tiny, skinny women is constantly in the media and the effects on young women is worrying. So Louise goes on an intense regime to drop the weight, meets girls who suffer from eating disorders, talks to other celebs with experience in this area and starts to suffer from mental and physical problems as she goes. In regards seeing the first hand impact of extreme dieting the film is worth seeing however it is no Super Size Me. The difference is in how it fills the time between Louise struggling and talking to camera. Some parts of it are good and a honest contribution from Mel C is a highlight, but sections with Van Outen, at a stage school and with a group of girls with eating disorders aren't really that well used and are pretty weak. Super Size used Spurlock's experiment as a foundation to build a wider educational film on; here the film seems to take Redknapp as the focus and therefore the bigger picture is not that well done.
I wondered about the mixed message that Louise herself was giving out. On one hand we had Louise worrying about the trend for skinny role models and talking about her desire for having a daughter one day in a society where she can be comfortable whatever size she wants to be. But then contrast that with Louise's reaction seeing herself photographed without a professional stylist and without computer touching up she is genuinely shocked and says she hates being shown this way. Sort of a confused message from her there does she not see that the magazine stretching and slimming models by computer so they look like a size zero is the same as a photograph of a celeb being a size zero. I'm not sure who she is to criticise others for contributing to the peer pressure put on young woman to be skinny while having that attitude. Maybe it is easier for her to look down her nose at them, while she achieves the same effect with computer effects because they are unhealthy and she is not bit short-sighted perhaps. I would have liked to have seen her pushed a bit more not to blame her but to see if she recognises her part in it all.
A mixed film then. On one hand it takes Louise and lets us see the impact of her crash dieting on her emotions and body and it is worthy for doing this on primetime. However it does tend to throw out platitudes about "why can't we all just be healthy" etc and fails to use this experiment to examine the bigger picture. A worthy film then but one that is too "celeb" and packaged (lots of cool music on the soundtrack) but fails to build on the foundation. Super Size Me is the aim, but it falls a long way short of that mark.
