‘Britney Ever After’ review: It’s terrible and you probably watched every second of it
This weekend, Lifetime decided to air their latest TV Movie That Makes No Sense in their long lineup of TV Movies That Make No Sense: “Britney Ever After.” It arrived, it was horrendous, and now we can move on and pretend as though it never happened.
This was a dumpster fire, really all across the board. The writing was the equivalent of throwing pieces of paper against a wall and hoping that there were secret words underneath the paint like on this past season of “American Horror Story.” The pacing was a remake of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” sputtering and moving about at the most uneven rate possible. It’s like someone behind the scenes was dreading getting to the bad stuff so they were like “let’s draw out all the VMA performances and Justin Timberlake stuff as long as possible.”
Also, historical accuracy. This Britney was texting before texting was seemingly a thing, and she also had a flat-screen probably earlier than anyone had one. Also, SINCE WHEN WAS HER DENIM DRESS A PANTSUIT?
What may have been the weirdest part of the whole thing was seeing an entire Britney biopic without any real Britney music. It was like production couldn’t afford the very story that they were trying to tell, so they just cycled through all the hits and were just like “eh, you get the gist.”
By the time you got to some of the more dramatic parts of Spears life, things really got weird. Someone decided to intercut her melting down with montages of her playing with her kids. Then, someone REALLY brought things to a crawl during the meltdown. We started out slow in the Timberlake, rushed right through the middle period, and then drew out the most excruciating part of her life in terrible fashion. Truth is, it really wasn’t all that interesting when it actually happened. Here’s your summary: Former teen idol struggles with life in the public eye, has meltdown, and needs psychiatric help. Not quite sure how in the world this required anything as big and dramatic as what it is that we actually got … especially since the movie really couldn’t be bothered to give you much of the other side of it. We got maybe a few minutes of “it kind of improves” and that’s it, given that we took a gigantic leap to Las Vegas once someone realized that this was only a two-hour movie and there needed to be an ending that wasn’t the most depressing thing of all time.
The thing about Britney’s life is that the reason people like her, and want to celebrate her, is her legacy as a performer and some of the silly, lighthearted songs she performed. She was a big part of the childhood for many people, and everyone wants to forget that period of time we all felt sorry for it. This movie works into overdrive to make sure that there’s no way we possibly forget that ever, and it’s almost on a shameful, ridiculous level. It stopped being guilty-pleasure and went straight for just “guilty.”
Also, have we forgotten to mention that the whole documentary part of this made zero sense whatsoever? We don’t know who she was speaking to or why.
The one bit of praise that’s worth handing down is to Natasha Bennett, who did her best playing Britney despite the fact that nobody would ever think she was good enough because she’s not Britney and nobody can ever be Britney. She is to Britney what Camilla Luddington was to Kate Middleton. We give her credit for even signing on probably knowing that she’d need a hazmat suit after she was done with all of this. Hey, remember that Camilla got to be virtual Lara Croft after “William & Kate”! Also, “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Otherwise, this was garbage … but didn’t you KNOW it’d be garbage? You probably watched all of it anyway, but there’s no judgment since we did, as well. That’s the thing about Lifetime movies — they’re the giant bag of Cheetos that you get because they’re on sale, and you tell yourself that you’re not going to eat them all in one night. Then you do, and you feel sick for about the next twelve hours. Maybe there were a few good memories in there of starting out the bag, but then after that it turned into a night of bad decisions. Grade: D+.
What did you think of “Britney Ever After”? Share below! (Photo: Lifetime.)