Her Best Move

Taking a decidedly Sweet Valley High approach to the far less glamorous world of teenaged insecurities and struggles, Her Best Move is a harmless and well intentioned film that has been assembled with borderline incompetence, but should please healthy and less socially-inclined preteen girls. Parents will be pleased to see a film about young women whose biggest struggles involve juggling team sports with after school employment and a dwindling social life, rather than dealing with rainbow parties and having an older boy convince them that it’s okay to take it up the "pooper” (referred to as "the screamer” in this reviewer’s high school days), as they won’t get pregnant. That’s right, this is a film where the audience is expected to accept and believe that a teenager’s biggest concern in life would be disappointing her daddy and who responds to her first kiss by doing interpretive dance on the soccer field (lord knows what she’d do after a fingerbang). Sure, there’s girl-on-girl cattiness involving a "mean story” but it’s not of the delectable soaking-her-tampons-in-poison-ivy variety that movies like Mean Girls delighted in. The story follows 15-year-old Sara Davis (Leah Pipes), who has a chance to join the U.S. National Soccer Team, but finds herself struggling with newfound lust (care of Drew Tyler Bell), obligations to her father (Scott Patterson) and her needy best friend (Lalaine). After running herself into the ground trying to please everyone around her, Sara does some personal exploration and discovers what it is that she wants from life (at the age of 15). Like most teen fare, there’s nothing particularly insightful or new here and it has all the artistic integrity of a beer commercial, but it’s breezy, well paced and the lead, Leah Pipes, is likable and charming enough to carry the light weight of the film on her capable shoulders. The DVD includes no additional features but is one of those double-sided deals with both the "full screen” and "widescreen” versions.