Film: Triple Dog
Year of production: 2010
UK Release date: 23rd May 2011
Distributor: High Fliers
Certificate: 15
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Pascal Franchot
Starring: Brittany Robertson, Alexia Fast, Scout Taylor-Compton, Janel Parrish, Emily Tennant
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Canada
Language: English
Review by: Robyn Simmons
An array of high school stereotypes are brought together for a birthday celebration they won’t forget. Pascal Franchot’s girlie comedy sees a juvenile party game go a step too far, and take a revealing turn for the truth in this teenage whodunit.
The pink-obsessed popular girls of school are joined by the obligatory goth girl and led astray by the head-strong skater when newcomer Eve turns sweet 16. Pushed together by their Stepford-mothers, they’re left to entertain themselves. Content with talking about boys and playing with nail varnish, they are soon shaken up by the arrival of Chapin on her trusty board.
Introducing the girls to Triple Dog, a version of truth or dare with the added threat of hair clippers, flashbacks ensue that build up character profiles and narrative. Via these glimpses of prior events, viewers are enlightened and characters reminded of accusing evidence that suggests an answer to their school’s darkest secret: why did Stacey St Clare jump?
At least, that is presumably the intention. Whether Franchot achieves this in his second feature length effort is another matter, as plot gives way to trivial antics and cheap laughs. Perhaps his chosen genre and audience unavoidably limits character and story development, but they seem to have slipped from his priorities completely. Admittedly, a story centred around a group of friends is character-led, but apparently that doesn’t make it character-driven, and the cast are hardly satisfying. The only girl with a bit of spunk, Chapin, turns out to be an unbearably irritating rebel without a cause. She lives to make life a laughing stock for everyone else, and her “spunk” is in fact just bad attitude. As for her friends, if they did the Macarena naked, no-one would notice. Some of their dares aren’t far off this, but it’s hard to imagine such sheltered girls actually pulling them off in reality.
Audiences are likely to be frustrated by a lack of protagonist. Several possibilities are thrown up by the troupe, but a central point of view is the only thing in Triple Dog that is not made blindingly obvious. With no-one to lead this superficial journey and no-one to share perspective or insight with, there is no safety net that viewers can fall back on, no reliable focal character for viewers to identify with. It is therefore difficult to actually care about any of the girls, much less get involved in the story. After all, who are viewers meant to be rooting for, and why?
Absurdly given a 15 certificate, Franchot has missed out on a captive teenage audience: how many 14 year olds these days haven’t heard about third-base? With the script’s immature humour, and flat character and plot development, one can’t help but get the feeling that Franchot was aiming strictly at pre-teens, or at least one hopes so, for that is the only way to justify Triple Dog.
Schoolchildren probably will relate to the clichés of school life, or enjoy pretending that they do. If they don’t know someone like Eve, Chapin or Liza, then they’ll have seen them in countless other films. And, let’s face it, which school doesn’t have the preps, the skaters and the token loner goth? In terms of setting, too, Franchot may have succeeded in engaging an audience younger than 15. The school corridor, the family home, and the house party are all standard environments that young viewers will recognise from their own lives. With such familiar settings comes familiar situations, like the older brother and his smelly friends, and the locker conversations between lessons. Adults are, of course, kept to a minimum, and when they do crop up, they are naturally flimsy figures of authority to be flouted and laughed at. No doubt this will delight and enthral youngsters.
Also for the pre-teen viewer there is a collection of scenes that sees Franchot interact with them on a level that is almost meaningful. Eve’s home situation isn’t as perfect as her two-point-four upbringing would imply. Although far from original, tensions between her and her father are likely to touch many viewers. Her passive resignation to her lack of power over her circumstances is moving in its transparent way. Similarly, the all-American (or should that be Canadian?) house party provides viewers with a window of either escapism or identification. Booze, peer pressure and the opposite sex makes a recipe for teenage anxiety, and this is only made worse for the characters by the omnipresence of Triple Dog. Viewers can’t help but sympathise with the naïve girls and their discomfort, although it would have been nice if Franchot had made more of it. Instead, characters comply all too quickly, and Eve’s transformation from pure innocence to lusty predator is beyond belief.
Triple Dog is ideal for little girls who want to be teenagers; but not for the market that its 15 certificate restricts it to. What would be considered weaknesses to older viewers would be happily acceptable to pre-pubescent girls, and would in fact strengthen the film. As it is, Triple Dog is yet another forgettable high school movie lost in the depths of teen cinema. RS
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