I went to see a
movie with my
sister today. It was called
What a Girl Wants. It starred
Amanda Bynes (who, among other things, was also in
Big Fat Liar and had her own show on
Nickelodeon,
The Amanda Show). The movie also had other people in it, but none of them are really worth mentioning since they are nothing when compared with Amanda.
I was sitting next to this young girl, who was probably around 10 years old. Since it was dark in the theatre, I never did get a very good look at her, but she was pretty, had blonde hair, and wore glasses. Since I'm a weirdo, I
obviously took the time to notice these things about her and I continued to keep an eye on her throughout the movie.
The movie is basically about this American girl who goes to London in search of the father that she never knew. Her father is a politician from a noble family and she is an obnoxious teenager. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues as she tries (poorly) to fit in with the snooty people of upper-class Britain. About halfway through the movie, she figures out what she needs to do to fit in, and she magically transforms herself into the model of a high class debutante.
Predictably, she makes herself fit in well with society, but in the process, she loses those things about here that makes her who she really is and what she likes about herself, leading to a general unhappiness. In a pivotal scene, her evil stepmother (there are many references to Cinderella throughout the movie) locks her into a room during her coming out ball, causing her to miss the father-daughter dance she has longed for. Somehow, during this ordeal, she realizes that she can't continue living her life this way and is resolved to go back to New York and regain her old life, leaving her father alone and unhappy in London.
To make a long story short, its a pretty nice story about how you should be true to yourself and that family (and the father-daughter relationship) is more important than anything else.
What was my point here? Well, during the scene where Amanda's character gets locked in a room (the "pivotal scene" mentioned earlier), the little girl next to me starts crying. And we're talking some major waterworks here -- tears running down her cheeks, quiet sobbing, and her mother giving her big hugs saying, "Its all right." The crying continued until the movie ended, about 20 minutes later.
Clearly, this has had me bothered today. Why was the girl crying? Here's what I've come up with:
- I'm practically never around young girls (which is certainly a shame in and of itself) and maybe they are just really that sensitive. The scene was pretty sad, so maybe the girl was just overcome with the sadness and couldn't pull herself back together.
- There could have been something happening in the young girl's life related to her father (or lack thereof) and the movie's focus on a not-so-good father-daughter relationship brought strong emotions to the surface.
- None of the above.
I really feel bad for the girl and wish that I could have been the one to comfort her, to be the one she turns to when she's down. I wish that I could know what she was feeling at that moment so that I could share in her pain. My life is so simple, plain, and emotionless... How can someone so young, so unformed, so naive to the ways of the world, have something that I can only dream about: the ability to just break down and cry about everything and nothing all at once and to have someone's arm to shed these tears on.