Girl in Progress (2012)

Some films are beautifully understated in their power and presence and resonate with audiences for years to come, then, there are films like Girl in Progress. The 2012 film by Patricia Riggen was completely contrived in its use of clichés, even though the point of the film was supposed to be to poke holes in clichés. Eva Mendes & Patricia Arquette join with Cierra Ramirez to expose the lengths a child will go to escape a disinterested parent and speed their own maturity and growth. Mother/daughter relationships aren't always the seamless pinnacle of female bonding and connection that we often imagine, as Girl in Progress painfully proves.Grace (Eva Mendes) stars as a self-absorbed spoiled single mother who had a child when she was still very young herself and refused to put her child first until she almost lost her. Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez) is a young girl who is dragged around from city to city on her mother's whim unable to settle down and root herself in any one place. To make matters worse, Ansiedad, a full-time high school student is also the sole caretaker of the home she shares with her mother. The cook, the maid, and her mother's personal assistant, Ansiedad is often left to her own devices at nights when her mother leaves to pursue her many male suitors. One day, in English class, Ansiedad is inspired to write her own coming-of-age story. She writes a fool-proof plan that will result in her inevitable maturity and enough life resources to leave her absent mother. Her only ally, her English teacher Ms. Armstrong (Patricia Arquette) attempts to help her along the way, as much as a teacher can and eventually reaches the child to help her realize that experiencing a series of events in a prescribed order will not automatically bring about maturity. Along this journey, when she finds the time, Grace attempts to repair the damage done to her and her daughter's relationship.This film had a very Lifetime network feel to it, taking an hour and a half to illustrate the very obvious points that you cannot plan out your life, and no one really knows that they're doing while on earth. Taking so much time to demean the use of clichés while simultaneously using them was a filmmaking decision that fell flat. Skip this journey of mother/daughter bonding, you're not missing anything.

Girl in Progress is a film feature that stars Eva Mendes and Cierra Ramirez together with Matthew Modine and Patricia Arquette.It is about the coming-of-age into maturity of a young woman who is taught interestingly by her teen-age daughter.Patricia Riggen directs.Grace is an immature single mom who is consumed by her occupation to pay the bills and to provide for her daughter,Ansiedad as well as her affair with a married man in the person of Dr.Hartford.But when Ansiedad's English teacher, Ms. Armstrong introduces her students to classic coming-of-age stories, Ansiedad is inspired to skip adolescence and jump-start her life to rebel against her mother due to the lack of attention she receives from her. She enlists the help of her loyal friend, Tavita to plot her shortcut to become an adult immediately.She designs a flow chart to remind her to indulge in a wide range of bad behavior such as drinking, stealing, failing tests, losing her virginity in a one-night stand and cruelly taunting her best friend.Her ultimate goal becomes to run away from home and move to New York on her own.But later,Ms.Armstrong takes her to the Principal's Office wherein Grace meets her daughter.After an argument,we get to see Ansiedad once again goes back and act as a teen-ager once again and Grace decides to change for the better for her daughter's sake.Although the film has an interesting premise,it was definitely contrived and does go far away from clichés.Aside from that,it does not give us any reason to care for the characters from they are far from being heartwarming.It could have been a better film if it wasn't implausible and if the story has never been used over and over again.Added to that,we also get limited humor and it fails to elicit laughter from most of its comedic scenes.The only positives in the film is Mendes' likability as Grace and Ramirez's portrayal of Ansiedad.

Loved the idea of this movie and what it was mostly about, but must say this movie totally lost me with it's overuse of the word retarded. I really think society today knows better than to incorporate that derogatory word in the media. There is no purpose. Shouldn't we be eliminating that word from our vocabulary, nor encouraging the use of it? What talented writing; there is no reason for this! Beyond that, movie was great and different from anything I have watched in some time. Interesting story about a young girl trying to find her way without a true mother figure and the struggles she goes through. Very good depiction of a rough adolescence and makes you laugh cry and sympathize with the trials and roughness of this age.

Girl in Progress revolves around Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez), a young adolescent with a mother too busy juggling two jobs and dozens of relationships to give her attention. One day at school, young Ansiedad - who goes by Ann, most of the time - learns about "coming of age" stories from her teacher. She becomes instantly inspired, researching anything and everything about them, and finally memorizes the formula well enough to make an attempt to have her life follow the basic route of one of those stories. She posts all the clichés like "excel at something geeky," "become the bad girl," and "dump best friend," who in this case happens to be the overweight Tavita (Raini Rodriguez).Ann's mother is Eva Mendez's Grace, a very conceded, uninvolved woman of many low qualities. She got pregnant at seventeen, was kicked out of the house by her strict mother, never got married, and spends time dating numerous men. She is mostly absent while Ann embarks on this conquest, only turning up to vaguely question her daughter's recent behavior, before going back to doing what she was originally doing. But hey, this is a coming of age story, so I guess it's just following the rules. Right? Grace is also dating a married gynecologist (Matthew Modine), spending more time with him than her daughter, so I guess maybe it's best that Ann seek out other people to influence her besides her mother.We've all seen this idea before. The only difference is we've seen it with more heart, energy, and self-awareness than this film has to offer. There are films like Easy A and Juno, that inject themselves with witticisms and insight into the teenage life, never mocking it or festering in clichés, but satirizing the clichés commonly utilized in modern-day coming of age stories. Then, there are those rare and unpleasant experiences like Girl in Progress that simplify the core story here; the complex relationship between the mother and the daughter. We see the daughter spend the entire movie going through this tireless phase of rebellion and we see her desperately try to win back her mother's attention away from her countless number of boyfriends.The picture's main flaw is it lacks a single compelling character that we feel for and want to watch for more than just a few minutes. Ann is a spoiled brat who often goes undisciplined (and I simply can not forgive her for being an adolescent and being hormonal - maybe if she packed more of an urgency than just, "I want my mom to notice me" perhaps I could've), Grace is the kind of mother I'm blessed to not have, and her boyfriend is faceless and unimportant in every way.This is what you call "a big screen sitcom." Instead of making a film centered truly depicting the lives of teenagers with interesting, redeemable qualities, the filmmakers of Girl in Progress seem to believe it would be more fun to make a film centered around depressingly bland teenage conventions set not for the big screen but more for a Television movie network. The first act is instantaneously stale, the second doesn't fair much better, and the third act concludes with a mechanical exit that feels over-plotted and under-executed. Perhaps if we had a character that was at least in some aspects likable, this wouldn't have happened.NOTE: Girl in Progress was released on Mother's Day weekend and was marketed as a film for mothers and their daughters to see. I can only imagine the awkward, unprecedented bleakness such a well-meaning move probably played out. There are better films that tackle the same struggle of adolescent confusion. I'd start with Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen and go from there.Starring: Eva Mendes, Cierra Ramirez, Matthew Modine, Patricia Arquette, Eugenio Derbez, and Rani Rodriguez. Directed by: Patricia Riggen.