The Bling Ring (2013) - An S. Coppola misfire; boooooooring

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A promising, amusingly made sunglass-centered poster for Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring

I am a huge fan of New-Yorker master filmmaker Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation (2003)). Somewhere (2010) is my favorite among her films, a very intimate and delicate look at a modern man, a rare character study with formidable performances by Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning, wonderful images, music and pace.
Unfortunately, I can't recommend her latest, The Bling Ring.
Whether the film is a crime drama, social criticism, youth drama, a satire or a mix of these genres is hard to say, and it feels like write/director Coppola also had not completely made up her mind on the matter as she made it:

The true story of a group of Los Angeles resident teenagers who robbed celebrities for about 3 mil. $ worth of luxury goods before getting busted a few years ago. One of them had a reality show, Pretty Wild, at the time of her arrest.  

Coppola apparently fell for the contemporary quality of the ridiculous fringe story as found in Nancy Jo Sales' (American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers (2016), book) article, The Suspects Wore Louboutins (2010, Vanity Fair). The obvious challenge in order to make such a film work is, of course, how to make the spoiled, robbing, coke-sniffing brats youths likable or at least entertaining enough in order for people to bother seeing their pretty predictable downwards spiral and care a bit about what happens to them. This utterly fails, and based on this Coppola-quote, it seems she did not realize how disengaging and frankly boring the film becomes, when the audience have no feelings involved in the protagonists: “They were 16 and perhaps their brains hadn’t formed completely yet.”
If anything is to be learned from The Bling Ring, it must be not to start a huge film with main characters that you as writer/director feel are dumb, and not terribly amusing, (which is the attraction of, for instance, many of the Coen brothers' moronic characters for instance.)
The good thing about The Bling Ring is the fact that Emma Watson (The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)), one of the loveliest young actresses out there today, gives a great performance as one of the misguided girls. She lifts several scenes, and if anything does, she is what makes the film worth watching.
Reflecting on her career up until now, Coppola perhaps has come to the mistaken opinion that her role as a filmmaker is to reflect society. But that is not her role. It is to tell us compelling, meaningful stories that move us. I can only give her one piece of advice for her next film: Find a better one.
One of my favorite comediennes Leslie Mann (This Is 40 (2012) plays one of the really loopy LA-parents. If anyone other than themselves are to blame for these adolescents' misbehavior, I point to the parents. And personally I feel lucky I wasn't a teen anywhere near the Hollywood Hills, as my own trouble-making genes in my teenage years were no less evolved than the Bling Ring punks'.
The film is shot by cinematographers Christopher Blauvelt (Meek's Cutoff (2010)) and Harris Savides, (Greenberg (2010)), a truly great photographer who died of brain cancer during production, and the film is therefore dedicated to him.
Bling Ring does gather some initial interest because we get to see the lavish fashion, jewelry, and mansions, (Coppola got permission to shoot two weeks in Paris Hilton's  house, who had been among the actual victims of the break-in group.) But nothing much dramatically happens for most of the film, as we just witness more and more break-ins and drugs taken, - and never a single hangover or any scenes that make us bond emotionally with the characters.
They have probably continually seemed shallow and unlikable in the film's research process and therefore still do. It makes it all very boring and pointless. The really unreliable premise of liking The Bling Ring is that it is based on a fascinating, contemporary phenomenon, (celeb/reality-culture craze/obsession.) In my opinion, though, it's not nearly fascinating enough for this unfunny, undramatic ride to work.

Related posts:

Sofia Coppola: 2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

2013 in films - according to Film Excess
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Somewhere (2010) - S. Coppola's phenomenal existential character study

Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: 8 mil. $

Box office: 19.1 mil. $

= Minor flop (returned 2.38 times the cost)

[Bling Ring opened the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes on 16 May and runs 90 minutes. Shooting took place in California, including Los Angeles, from March - April 2012. It opened #21 to a great 214k $ first weekend in 5 theaters (a hefty 42k $ average) in North America, where it peaked at #10 and in 650 cinemas the following week and grossed 5.8 mil. $ (30.4 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Italy with 4.1 mil. $ (21.5 %) and France with 2.7 mil. $ (14.1 %). The film won a minor prize in Cannes. Coppola returned with music video Phoenix: Chloroform (2013), TV special A Very Murray Christmas (2015), filmed opera performance La Traviata (2017) and finally with real movie The Beguiled (2017). Watson returned in This Is the End (2013). The Bling Ring is fresh at 60 % with a 6.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Bling Ring?