Dr. Oshé vs. Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars

It's funny just how many movies get remade, even movies that not a lot of people know or care about. The movie I'd like to talk about today is a movie that no one has seen, and is a remake of much better movie that no one has seen either. The original movie is called Harriet the Spy (1996), based on the novel by Louise Fitzhugh. In 2010, someone thought it was a great idea to remake it to appease to the drooling idiot kids who watch Disney Channel.

This was Nickelodeon's first movie.

This was another "film" farted out by Disney Channel.

So, to begin this review of Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars, I'd like to talk about the original Harriet the Spy. I watched this movie several times as a kid. It actually inspired me to start writing, and my mother has told me that it also taught me how to be mean to people.

What can I say? I've got to learn from somewhere.

Anyway, the gist of the story is that Harriet is an 11-year-old girl who is determined to become a writer when she grows up. Her parents are always busy with work, and they often go out to fancy parties. Harriet has a nanny named Golly, with whom she is very close. She spends her spare time after school spying on several different people and writing about them in her notebook, which she labels "PRIVATE." She and her two friends, Janie and Sport, plot against their classmate, the notorious Marion Hawthorne, the prim and proper kiss-ass who rules the class with an iron fist. Whatever she says goes.

Harriet's world is changed when Golly decides to leave the family, telling her that she is now old enough to take care of herself.

Then one day, the whole class is playing bumper tag in the park, and Marion stumbles on Harriet's notebook, which she reads to the rest of the class. They read all of the mean things Harriet wrote about each of them, including the not-so-nice things she wrote about her best friends, Janie and Sport. Harriet has alienated everyone.

Without her voice of guidance (Golly) and her friends, Harriet begins plotting sweet vengeance against her classmates, who have formed a club to torment her. She gets revenge on each of them, and soon she learns the consequences of her actions. Harriet grows up a bit, and when she is appointed writer of the class newsletter, she works in an apology to everyone in the class, even to Marion Hawthorne. Her friends are by her side once again.

This movie is actually pretty good, considering its positive message and the fact that Harriet is a very relatable character. Allow me to list out the characteristics that make up the true Harriet the Spy:

-she is playful and curious
-she is determined, and works hard to achieve her ambitions
-she isn't afraid to take risks
-she isn't concerned with appearances, only her work truly matters
-she is an individual, who isn't concerned about appealing to the masses

These are all of the things I look for in Harriet the Spy. Will the Harriet in Blog Wars hold up to these expectations?

I doubt it. You can't get much better than this.

Okay, here it goes. Wikipedia said Blog Wars is the sequel to the first movie. How bad could it be?

Take a good look. Has your question been answered yet?

Okay, right away the film is disappointing me. In the first few minutes, teenage Harriet is introducing us to all these people in her life, and she's using sophisticated (i.e. long) words in her sentences, just like that annoying kid in school who thinks he's smart. She complains to the family chef (a character that wasn't in the first movie) that she doesn't want to eat the meal he made; she wants a tomato sandwhich.

Hold it! In the original movie, Harriet also ate tomato sandwiches, but she made them herself. Sorry, new Harriet, that's a point off your grade.

Also, she makes this face a lot. That's three points off!

New Harriet continues her introductions, and already she's sassy and bratty, the combination you don't want in a character who's supposed to be relatable and likeable. And guess what. GOLLY IS STILL HER NANNY. She left in the first movie. Sure, she came back for a scene to give Harriet some advice on how to deal with her classmates, but then she left permanently. Why, in the damn sequel, is she back?!

Then New Harriet introduces her friends, Janie and Sport, and I get even more angry.

Apparently Janie is a hippie environmentalist.

...

NO.

Janie is NOT an environmentalist. She's a mad scientist. The original Janie planned on creating untraceable poisons for Marion Hawthorne, and she built stink bombs! Why why whyyyy would she...

Ugh. It doesn't matter anyway, because this characteristic that Harriet establishes doesn't pay off for the whole rest of the movie. I'm not kidding, she says right in the beginning that Janie is a radical environmentalist, and Janie does nothing environmentally radical.

Then Harriet introduces Sport, who is a boy who can't play sports. Hilarious.

First of all, the original Sport was a boy with a struggling author dad. He did all of the cooking and cleaning in his house while his father struggled with writer's block. He was an independent kid who was also friendly and goofy, and a good friend to Harriet.

New Sport is just some schmuck that can't play basketball. At least, that's what Harriet says in the beginning. You never see Sport play basketball again until the very end, where he scores a basket on his first try.

...

WHY?

You don't introduce characters with certain traits that are not important to the story, or that are not even exhibited by that character at any point during the movie! In the beginning of Star Wars, it's not established that Luke makes good pancakes. That's because it doesn't serve a purpose to the story!

Anyway, I haven't even gotten into the plot. And that's where it gets really insulting.

So, Harriet wants to be the writer of the class blog. Hmm, in the original she wanted to be the writer of the class newsletter. And she's competing against Marion Hawthorne in both movies. Is--is this going to be the same movie?

But suddenly Blog Wars takes a turn away from the original to establish that there's a popular movie star by the name of Skander (that's not a joke) who all of the girls in Harriet's school are obsessed with. Harriet soon realizes that if she were to write about Skander--who she hates with a passion--on the blog, more people would read it, and she'll become the class blogger.

New Harriet is pandering to the masses. That's another five points off!

Harriet soon finds out that her father is producing the new movie that Skander is starring in. She jumps on the opportunity to begin spying on Skander so she can write about him more accurately. Harriet's objective is to "expose" Skander as a huge douchebag so that her dumb classmates will stop idolizing him.

Well, he does have a doucheface.

Meanwhile, at home, where her parents are ALMOST ALWAYS AROUND, Golly occasionally quotes famous people to Harriet, but never says anything useful. May I remind you that in the original movie, Harriet needed Golly around because she was a child. Old Golly was the voice of reason and guidance in Harriet's young life. New Harriet is definitely old enough to stay home alone, so why is Golly still here??

So, Skander comes over to their house and is introduced to Harriet's father. Then Harriet's father introduces her to Skander, and I was struck with the overwhelming fear that Harriet will fall in love with Skander by the movie's end. This kind of thing always happens in Disney Channel movies.

Like in this monstrosity I sat through when I was babysitting once.

Then, Harriet finds Golly sneaking around behind her back, and is planning on leaving to take care of the kids of a guy she's dating. It's really not like the original Golly to be so secretive, so of course they're going to make the new Golly the opposite kind of character she's supposed to be.

Harriet then finds out what hotel Skander is staying at and plans to sneak in, with the help of Janie and Sport.

Notice that they're all wearing bright colors. Way to be discrete, guys.

After a stupid scene of all of them trying to be spies...

Hilarious hijinks ensue!!

Harriet makes it into Skander's hotel room and hides behind the couch. At one point she actually bursts out giggling, which Skander hears!

...

Assuming Harriet has been spying since she was 11 in the first movie, she should be a lot better at it by now. Not to mention HARRIET DOES NOT GIGGLE DURING SPY SESSIONS. Jeez, New Harriet, are you going to completely fail my test??!!

Spoiler alert: Yes.

Harriet continues writing on the blog, which gets the attention of Marion Hawthorne's friends, who all love Skander, despite the things Harriet writes about him. They ask her to come over for a slumber party and she says yes.

...

HARRIET DOES NOT HANG OUT WITH THE POPULAR GIRLS. THE REAL HARRIET WOULD HAVE SAID NO, I DON'T WANT TO GO TO YOUR LAME-ASS PARTY!

So, anyway, all this time, Harriet is pretending to know Skander personally, since her dad is producing his movie. She can't actually hang around Skander, so she spies on him. And she's doing this so she can write on the blog about him and so the popular girls will not think she's a fraud.

HARRIET THE DAMN SPY DOESN'T CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK.

Harriet begins spending a lot of time with the popular girls, claiming that this way she can take them out from the inside. Did--did th-this movie just become Mean Girls?

Yes, yes it did.

Okay, then Harriet overhears Golly telling the guy she's dating in secret that she's going to tell Harriet's family that she's leaving. Then, Harriet says, AND I QUOTE, "What's Golly up to?"

What... what's Golly up to?

DUH, SHE'S LEAVING YOU, STUPID!!

Soon Janie and Sport start getting annoyed at Harriet for spending so much time hanging out with the popular girls.

Then Janie has the gall to directly quote the original movie by saying, "The only thing more pathetic than being Marion Hawthorne is wanting to be Marion Hawthorne."

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

In the original movie, Harriet is the one who says this; she is talking about Rachel, a girl who hangs around Marion Hawthorne, acting has a devoted follower to her. In this movie, Janie is saying this because Harriet is hanging out with Marion Hawthorne's friends??

Harriet does on occasion try to hang out with Janie and Sport again, but they act all mad and walk away from her. I'd understand if Janie did this, because in this movie she's a typical teenage girl in a Disney Channel movie, but why is Sport holding a grudge? He's not even involved in anything that happens in the movie. In fact, Janie isn't either.

Whatever. Harriet continues to spy on Skander. The thing is, Harriet--who is supposed to be really good at spying--insists on wearing a BRIGHT, FIRETRUCK RED coat when she's spying. Even when she's spying on Skander, who is jogging near the woods, she's wearing red.

No one will ever find me here!

How about you wear green or brown or anything that MIGHT NOT ATTRACT ATTENTION TOWARDS YOU?!

In the original movie, she gets caught once. You'd think she's learned by now how not to get caught. Pretty soon, Skander starts to become paranoid that someone is following him. HMM, I WONDER WHY.

I think someone's following me, actually.

He noticed Harriet at the mall, and starts following her. Nice job, Harriet. Your title is HARRIET THE SPY, why don't you start acting like it?

It was here that I paused the movie for a bit to let off some steam in my notebook. I wrote, "Who asked for this movie? Why was it made? WHYYYYY"

A food fight breaks out on the set of Skander's movie. For no reason.
Then Golly catches Harriet following her. Probably because she was wearing red.

Harriet confronts Golly about her plans to leave, and I can't help but not feel sorry for her at all. You are 16 years old, Harriet, you don't need a nanny. It's not like she's done anything useful for you in this entire movie.

Blah, blah, blah, blah...
Everyone's mad at Harriet (for some reason I don't care about) and she's all alone. She then proceeds to not exact revenge against her stupid classmates for being insufferable jerks. There is a overly-emotional montage of Golly leaving Harriet, which is not emotionally moving in the slightest. Later, Harriet's mother says "I will never forgive Golly for abandoning us." She says this because the doorbell is ringing and no one is answering it. ANSWER IT YOURSELF, YOU OLD WHORE.

Harriet takes a video of Skander saying that he hates all his fans and the way they worship him. The video ends up online, and goes viral. The news is in an uproar, calling it a "scandal." No, an affair is a scandal. This is just stupid.

Blah, blah, blah, blah...

Harriet fixes everything and apologizes to her friends in the only way the writers for Disney Channel know how, by the "I'm sorry I was a bad friend" cliché!
Then in a scene that mimics (read: COPIES) the original movie, Harriet is voted as the new class blogger. Golly comes back to stay forever. Harriet did not learn a thing, and did not have to grow up at all. The movie ends with horrible pop music--well--just pop music.

New Harriet, your final score is an F-. See me after class.

All in all, this supposed sequel to Harriet the Spy attempted originality and failed miserably. The scenes that weren't crappy carbon copies of scenes from the original movie were just a mixture of every Disney Channel movie ever made. The original Harriet the Spy is about a girl who learns about the consequences of her actions and grows up in the end. Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars is about a spoiled brat who doesn't learn anything and doesn't need to grow up in the end. The only good news is that Harriet does not fall in love with the douchey movie star.

Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars is an insult to the original film, and an insult to movies in general. Why this movie exists, I will never know. All I know for sure is that Disney Channel is where creativity and quality go to die horrible deaths. I also know exactly how New Harriet will be punished. Since she is not coordinated enough to fight me, I've resolved to simply make every waking moment for her terrifying.