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Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 1999 film Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century.
Story
At it’s core, this story is one that Disney and countless others have done a million times before and since, painted with a shiny sci-fi veneer.
It includes my most hated trope, parents who don’t believe their children.
Score: 0
Characters
The parents are frustrating and made me yell at the TV, but I enjoyed Zenon herself. She was confident, smart, amazingly lucky, and competent. Despite the overuse, I do like the competent child trope.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
The dialogue is both fascinating and cringe-worthy. The made up slang mixed with turn of the millenium slang just really interests me. I like that they made sure to have seperate styles of slang for earth vs the space station. A lot more thought went into this than I would have thought.
Score: 1
Visuals and Music
The special effects were okay for the time period despite some major misunderstandings of physics. The costuming was clever and the music was ok.
Score: 0.5
Fun
The parents and adults being about as smart as rocks took some of the fun out of it for me. I enjoyed the main character and the other kids.
Score: 0.5
Overall
The movie is a fascinating time capsule of retro sci-fi that has a wonderful main character. Unfortunately, the entire story is overly dependent on the aggressive stupidity of the adults and them not believing her.
Score: 2.5 Stars out of 5