Day 9 -- Triple Dog

Released: September 21st, 2010

Starring: Brittany Robertson, Scout Taylor-Compton, Alexia Fast, Janel Parrish, Emily Tenant, Aubrey Mozino

Writer/Director: Barbara Marshall/Pascal Franchot

Description: On the night of a sleepover, a group of teenage girls venture out in a competitive game of challenging dares. As the antics escalate, and the dares become more extreme, the girls unravel the truth behind a former student's rumored suicide.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

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"Triple Dog" begins as your average teenage slumber party movie, and all your typical characters are there: The queen, the nice girl, the snobby girl, the follower, the girl who wasn't invited, and of course, the rebel. The structure of the movie is basically a barely-R rated version of the 2004 film "Sleepover", which oddly enough starred Scout Taylor-Compton as well.

The movie begins with the girls meeting at the party, and we are introduced quickly to our main players: Eve, the birthday girl (Alexis Fast), Sarah, the nice girl (Emily Tenant), Cicely, the snob (Janel Parrish), Nina, the follower (Carly McKillip), Liza, the unwanted weird girl (Compton), and Chapin, the rebel (Brittany Robertson). 

After a few stereotypical teenage girl discussions on how to spend the evening, Chapin (really who names their kid Chapin) decides that they should play "triple dog", which is roided-up truth or dare -- minus the truth, and adding head shaving. This is where the plot slowly becomes interesting, but the terrible dialogue writing keeps it barely watchable.

I understand that they are supposed to be talking like high school girls, but the speech felt forced and unnatural on the actresses. Only Robertson and Compton come off as compelling during long dialogue scenes. The writer appears to be trying to inject slang terms as much as possible to show the audience, 'see I know how you talk'. The terms shizz (shit) and totes (totally) are the only ones I've heard used before in real life. I'll admit some of the flat dialogue does fall on the mostly new actresses because Robertson and Compton do a solid job with what they're given.

The movie's third act is where it actually becomes an okay movie, and not one full of cliches. As we slowly find out, through some of the worst delivered questions on film, exactly how Stacey St. Claire (Julia Maxwell) died, the pace picks up as it should. This is where Robertson takes her castmates to acting school (not that she hadn't been doing it the whole movie). As Chapin spins out of control after it's revealed that she dared St. Clair to jump off the bridge to her death, Robertson turns up the emotion and actually leads the movie to a satisfactory climax.

The whole movie is unremarkable except for the performances of Robertson, and the vastly underutilized Compton. When these two square off verbally, it really shines a light on the lack of experience and/or talent of the other actresses. Compton did a great job of showing the her character's emotion without saying a word. I never though, 'I wonder what Liza's feeling.'

It was clearly a case where the lead was perfectly cast (Robertson), and Compton played the role of scene stealer. Not like Matthew Lillard, but scene stealer in a way that she played the character well in every scene she was in and you were more interested in her than the inconsistent Fast, the movie's second lead.

"Triple Dog" had moments where you could see that there was a good story and theme, but it kept getting in its own way by constantly reminding us that these were high school girls. The drama would have been better if they made the dares a little more suspenseful, and spent more time with the mystery of St. Clair's death then reminding us every so often, 'hey, remember this girl jumped off a bridge and no one knows the real story.' I was more interested in that story than the dumb conflicts between the girls.

Rating: 5/10 -- Honestly, Brittany Robertson carried this movie without her it's probably a 3, and without Compton's Ally Sheedy-like performance as the loner, it would have been a 1. Guilty pleasure for girls, but not much more to anyone outside the pre-teen sect.