You hear that? Shirley Temple just let out a sigh of relief. And
before you ask, yes, she’s still alive.
During her heyday in the mid-to-late 1930s, Temple wasn’t
just Hollywood’s premiere child actress; she was one of
Hollywood’s premiere movie stars. For three years (1936 to
1938), her movies made more money in the box office than those of
any other actor or actress. And in 1938, Temple celebrated her 10th
birthday.
What made Temple more of a movie star than a child star was her
ability to carry the films she was in, regardless of her supporting
cast. Hollywood hadn’t seen anything like her.
And it still hasn’t.
Now, child stars aren’t movie stars. For whatever reason,
they’re not able to take on the load of carrying a film like
Temple. And with the release of “Confessions of a Teenage
Drama Queen” this weekend, starring Lindsay Lohan, the world
will once again be amazed at Temple’s legacy.
I have to admit that I really wanted to like “Confessions
of a Teenage Drama Queen,” despite its ridiculously
off-putting title and convoluted, useless trailer, which provided
little to no information about the movie itself. After starring in
remakes of “The Parent Trap” and “Freaky
Friday,” Lohan made the short list of child stars I can not
only tolerate, but actually enjoy watching.
While I questioned Lohan’s choice of material, I was glad
Disney allowed her to star in a movie without filling the screen
with many other recognizable actors. “Confessions of a
Teenage Drama Queen” served as Lohan’s Temple test, and
she failed. She failed miserably. Apparently, she needs bona-fide
actors like Dennis Quaid (“The Parent Trap”) or Jamie
Lee Curtis (“Freaky Friday”) around her to quell her
overwhelming love of seeing herself on a movie screen.
Ironically enough, the film plays like a child trying to tell a
story: It has so much energy and loves the idea of telling a story
so much, it can’t help but skip over the narrative flow that
would make it interesting.
So why is Temple still the only child actor able to fully cross
the boundary between child star and movie star?
Basically, child stars are older today. Lohan was 12 in
“The Parent Trap.” Haley Joel Osment was 11 when he
starred in “The Sixth Sense,” and Hilary Duff was a
whopping 14 when she started to play the title character on the
Disney Channel’s “Lizzie McGuire” series.
When starting out that old, child stars go through puberty as
they become famous, and their “cute” factor quickly
rides inversely to the number of zits on their foreheads. Watch
Osment progress from “The Sixth Sense,” through
“A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,” up to last
year’s “Secondhand Lions.” He gets older in each
film and decreasingly watchable.
Also, because they’re older, child actors today are
expected to do more in a film than Temple ever was in terms of
acting. More than being an actress, Temple was a movie star, but
Lohan has to be both. At 15.
Hollywood will probably never see another child achieve the kind
of success that Temple did, and that may be a good thing. If child
stars want to be movie stars, let them be actors first, and they
can only do that by working with other (and older) actors.
And maybe we can all forget about “Confessions of a
Teenage Drama Queen.”
Tracer is still excited for Lohan’s upcoming
“Mean Girls,” but only because it was written by Tina
Fey. E-mail him at jtracer@media.ucla.edu if you are excited,
too.