K-12

(Warning: this review is almost as long as the film)

For all those expecting to see a feature-length film: this is more like a series of music videos, one after the other, with some dialogue. It's interesting to read that Melanie Martinez, who's responsible for pretty much this whole thing, originally planned it to be much longer and had to cut several scenes to fit the budget. To put it simply, it shows.

From a musical perspective that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The choreography is absolutely outstanding. Martinez is just as good as the professional dancers and their moves fit the themes and moods of the songs. There's diversity among the dancers, too, although given their messages I would have quite liked to see some more variation in body type. The problem is that the powerful emotions Cry Baby displays while she's singing and dancing just aren't carried through into the script.

Honestly, the writing isn't bad, and for someone like Martinez who is known for writing music to branch out into scriptwriting is a brave thing to do. She knows she's putting it out there for criticism and that's what she's going to get. It just lacks something - there are scenes where a song will end with a furious character literally murdering an antagonist only to show the same character blandly smiling and chatting with her friend. It's very obvious where Martinez's talent lies, which is to show emotion through music and dancing; adding dialogue to the mix just seems to complicate things unnecessarily. The images in the film - Martinez holding up an orange as dancers lie around her like a religious painting; a woman cutting open another woman's head; a character about to be dissected by a science teacher - speak louder than the script ever could.

I'll acknowledge the elephant in the room and say that the visuals in this film are absolutely stunning. I've never been a fan of Martinez's pastel aesthetic but this is another level, diluting the cuteness with toned-down shades of pink and blue and imposing camera angles of misty fields so that it is more sophisticatedly sinister than cloying. I found myself wanting to sleep in a bedroom as cosy (and enchanted) as Cry Baby and Angelita's. It is obvious and rewarding how much thought went into hair, costumes and makeup. The special effects are hit and miss - there's one awkward moment where a character stares into a mirror and it shatters, only for it to be left painfully obvious where the shot changed - but when they work, they really work. A school bus goes under the sea and flies through the sky, and this manages to be convincing. Ghosts are ghostly enough. Puppets are enjoyably creepy and two characters even manage to levitate during a playground fight. For all its eerie prettiness, though, there is a frustrating lack of substance.

'Frustrated' is probably an accurate word for how Martinez felt trying to condense a planned three hours' worth of plot into about half that. 'Frustrated' is an accurate word for how viewers will feel when this leaves some characters' stories rushed or untold. It's a sad spoiler alert that the bully character, Kelly, is never given redeeming qualities or even a backstory. We see Cry Baby's mother passed-out drunk and yet Cry Baby still has a home, complete with a magical alarm clock and a pet tarantula, with no other indication of what her home life is like. Cry Baby spends a much too fast-paced section of the film skipping from song to song as she recruits friends, finding one in a cafeteria and introducing her as 'Magnolia' without having even spoken to her (I can just about excuse this scene because of the incredible dancing). On the bus, she talks to Angelita as if they have met before, but this is never explained. She finds another friend, whose name could be Flora or Fleur due to the lacklustre sound editing in the scene, who suffers from an eating disorder. All it takes is a very in-your-face speech about loving yourself from Cry Baby and Flora/Fleur is cured. Martinez checks off a list of societal problems - body image, the patriarchy, transphobia - without devoting more than five minutes to most of them, leaving some subplots that the story would have made sense without. A transgender teacher never gets her acceptance, for example, and the sources of the children's 'powers' are never clarified. Doesn't Kelly have powers? Doesn't Flora? Cry Baby's character can become convoluted due to all the conflicting morals she's pushing - why is she singing about being unsure of her body when she's already made the revelation that bodies are temporary? I couldn't help but think that the messages, especially coupled with the spiritual aspects of the film, were not as subtle as they could have been, though Martinez has demonstrated her mastery of metaphors in the past. It seemed like 'Strawberry Shortcake' and 'The Principal' could have been simplified versions of 'Alphabet Boy', whilst 'Orange Juice' was another level of 'Mrs Potato Head'. This loss of ambiguity in favour of expositional dialogue, as well as errors in pacing in which the lengths of gaps between songs would vary too much or too little, was probably the most disappointing part of the film. Perhaps it's the surrealism causing the confusion - although there are fine lines between fantasy, surrealism and using the above two to justify style over substance, and Martinez has parked her pastel pink school bus over all three.

For all its flaws, it's obviously very worth a watch for fans of Martinez's music and for all who enjoy films with a strong aesthetic, as long as they're willing to settle for some moments of questionable acting (Martinez is actually one of the strongest actors in the cast). It's by no means a triumph of cinema, but for what it was meant to be it's definitely a treat to both listen to and look at. There is a distinct lack of the dark comedy that was promised, and at times it's more like watching a sleekly nightmarish ballet than a human-made film about humans, but it should be considered where it came from. All of it is straight out of the mind of a woman with a clear creative vision, one which she has executed for the first time into a project full of loving detail. It's like Wes Anderson shot a musical based on a fever dream Tim Burton had about Mean Girls. Whilst it's ultimately missing the sarcastic, flawed, slightly scary side of the Cry Baby character we saw from Martinez's first music videos, it's a visually impeccable continuation of her story - and it's definitely a lot more interesting than a typical day at school.