Carly Schroeder. I consider Lizzie McGuire to have some retrograde aspects, grit stemming from the blatant vengeance culture approach of Lizzie's family. It was a step towards me considering modern Disney to be highly suspicious, but a few years on and I have to find Disney's Lizzie McGuire, also Nickelodeon's Zoey 101, still to be head and shoulders better than most other television series for kids that I have on DVD. Carly occasionally appearing as 'Melanoma', a memorable and very beautiful but scary friend of Lizzie's scary little brother.
The past two years I have looked to see if Carly had anything else out on disk. I found Firewall, which did not appeal to me. Now I have obtained this.
This story shows that she can handle a very different role to Melina. Not that all who have commented on this would agree. In this her beauty is usually tamed down but she is trying to head in directions that often feel to be sensible. The people around her have different understandings of sensible. For me, this is the power of the story.
There is a lot of grit in this story as well. It is based on the 1970's and the males remind me of the males in such as Detroit Rock City, alien and really vomit level aggressive cavemen. The football field is not understood as a place with rules of good conduct, it is more a battlefield where the opposition are tough and players are tough even to players on their own team who they do not consider to rate good conduct. They are supposed to be tough, skilled but tough. This would never be a Dr Spock understanding of manly male? This is nothing like the bits of football or UK rugby league that I used to occasionally go to in the 1960's.
It reminds me of the world of battling 'heroes' that I occasionally noticed in sports posters, local UK in the 1990's. An alien world. In the UK 1970's I did not notice the violence in people, it was there but more a hidden thing, silent and deadly.
In this, lead character Gracie is damaged by the violence, it knocks her down for more than half a year. She shows herself as having what it takes to gradually become a survivor. For me that is not the important part of the story, what counts more as this being a story that I can find okay on a second or third viewing. It is an okay way to pass the time.
Add the soundtrack including the sort of 1970's related music that I can rate as hot.
The bird is an American Kestral, aka American Sparrowhawk. A young male, not European but very common in the USA. The commentaries add detail. These are more real than one's average commentary.
