The Life Lessons of the Sleepover Classics
Written by Georgia Balmer
Graphics by Jade
Summer has always been synonymous with sleepovers for me. Long days spent by a pool turned into lazy nights with too many friends packed like sardines into stifling living rooms. A hectic buzz of late-night chatter, juvenile games of truth, and sickly sweet midnight snacks running into daybreak. Collectively, we probably slept for no more than six hours, waking up cranky and hangover-esque, long before our first sips of sugary sweet WKD.
At the core of any good sleepover is a good sleepover film. The perfect combination of campy feel, good humour, nostalgic glee and a dashing romantic lead, one who is still appropriate for us to gush over in our 20s, is hard to achieve. Hence, the reason for us watching the same six or seven films on rotation.
Whilst midnight snack-esque sleepovers have been replaced with nights ‘out-out’, there is still an instant nostalgia in catching a former ‘sleepover’ film on TV. The likes of Wild Child, 10 Things I Hate About You, Angus Thongs And Perfect Snogging, Bend It Like Beckham, Chalet Girl, and Mean Girls may not have won Academy Awards, but these films shaped our young psyche in a way our teachers only wished they could. As we cramped around the TV, silently praying that the scratched DVD would still work, we learnt more about life, love, and friendship than any classroom could ever hope to teach us.
Yet, looking back, were these lessons worth learning? Was the moral-esque twist in the tale one that delivered any true meaning? Or, are these old favourites all terribly dated and steeped only in nostalgic enjoyment. Were they ever really any good? Stubbornly, I think yes.
Over the last few years, we have seen strides made in the way female characters are presented on our screens. The idea of the male gaze is no longer a vague feminist critique, but a mainstream lens through which we can discuss the latest box office releases. The new sleepover classics read like a who's who of Greta Gerwig’s gang, more indie darlings than glossy rom-com, all sickeningly Oscar-worthy and properly ‘good’ films.
However, what the old guard lacks in acting talent and award-winning screenplays, they make up for with a genuine enthusiasm. Half of the fun of these films was watching the behind-the-scenes extras; embarrassingly, I’ve probably watched Alex Pettyfer’s and Emma Roberts’ tour of Wild Child’s haunted set more times than the film itself. We felt, after the tenth rewatch, as if we were part of the gang. In the crudeness of some scenes, as if we could easily slip in with the characters, assigning each friend their own counterpart in our favourite films. I’m still not sure if being compared to Drippy (June Temple’s character in Wild Child) is a compliment, but even now, I wish I had been a student at Abbey Mount.
It is against this backdrop that we see one of the best ‘make-over’ scenes in cinematic history. Arguably, it shouldn’t even be considered a scene; Poppy Moore’s transformation from spoilt LA brat to down to earth girl next door is rooted firmly in her friendships and not her physical make-over from blonde vixen to brunette. Most importantly, Poppy may ‘get the boy’ but the character is far more excited to ‘get the friends’ by the end of the film, the final shot being of the fivesome and not the new couple. It is a shockingly rare final scene, the film reminding us that it has been Poppy’s girlfriends that have helped her discover her purpose and happiness, and not a boy. In a sea of films pushing us to believe that the right boy will save the day, understanding that having the right friends around you is far more important is a message I’m relieved we received as we scoffed popcorn and fizzy laces.
Some scenes, viewed with a more scathing understanding of the aforementioned male gaze, become less nostalgic. Whilst a favourite, and not only because my name is also Georgia, Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging feels particularly awkward in rewatching.
In one sleepover scene, we see the group of friends anonymously rank each other’s physical features, a horrible little ‘game’ reflected in real life at schools up and down the country. A quick glance through Everyone’s Invited, the Instagram page, and now website, dedicated to giving a platform for testimonies of sexual assault, toxic ‘lad’ culture and teacher’s apathy towards sexual harassment in British schools, shows similar ‘games’ still being classroom favourites. You could argue that this is therefore a realistic portrayal of the cruel games even friends decide to play, but the film plays this scene as if the casual ‘bullying’ of close friends is normal and something to be encouraged. Thus, we did as told and embraced the game into our own sleepover ritual.
The most uncomfortable element, however, is the constant degradation of Lindsay, Georgia’s love revival in the film. The blonde ‘bombshell’ may show moments of cruelty towards Georgia’s gang, but as young teens, we should not have been allowed to believe that the nickname ‘slaggy Lindsay’ was at all justifiable. In a film in which our heroine spends the majority of her screen time attempting to snag the attention of older boy Robbie (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the overt slut-shaming of a classmate sends a somewhat confusing message.
Where we meant to want the boy, or only if we passed some kind of ‘non-slaggy’ moral benchmark first? The only message I remember from these scenes is that judging another girl based on my perception of her love life was normal and to be encouraged. Oh, and it is also completely acceptable to stalk and spy on said ‘love rival’, only to publicly embarrass them with the information gathered as a final hurrah for stealing their boyfriend. Who knew?
These scenes stand in sharp contrast to Booksmart, Olivia Wilde’s 2019 coming of age story that I wish we could have included in our sleepover rotation. Towards the end of the film, we see Molly (played by Beanie Feldstein) realize the true meaning behind Annabelle’s (Molly Gordon) nickname 'triple A’, a scene which instantly reminded me of ‘slaggy Lindsay’ when I first watched the film. The latter never gets the apology that ‘triple A’ does, Molly acknowledging her own role in perpetuating the sexist and gross bullying that Annabelle has been subjected to by the whole school. It shouldn’t feel monumental that 11 years after Angus Thongs we have been given a film that labels sexist nicknames as such, but it is with a worrying relief that Annabelle is not made the villain of the piece over a false rumour.
As I rewatch these sleepover classics with a greater understanding of life, or so I would like to think, it is hard not to feel disappointed with some of my old favourites.
At incredibly impressionable ages, we worshipped these films. Some, like Angus Thongs, fed a deeply sexist message that nothing is more important than finding the perfect boy. We were led to believe that the bullying of female friends and schoolmates was normal and to be celebrated, that nicknames like ‘slaggy Lindsay’ were funny, and that wearing a thong was equal to kicking puppies for fun.
Others, like Wild Child, taught us the importance of female friendship and warned us not to overlook the girls in our lives who are always there, ready to pick us back up again when it all goes wrong- normally, because of a boy. I can quote more lines from my favorite ‘sleepover films’ than I can books I read for school, algebra equations, and historical facts, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Some may have led us down a wrong path once or twice, but all I really remember from crowding around the TV as we settled in for the night, is a sense of happiness and belonging.