Sleepover is a picture that all but forces me to make this simple proclamation; AVOID THIS FILM AT ALL COST! No doubt, there will be some parents out there who will say I'm being far too hard on the movie, as Sleepover is nothing but a pleasant and harmless film for young girls in their early teens. That may very well be, but it's also one of the most ridiculous, fake and labored excuse for a comedy in recent memory (at least since Johnson Family Vacation and The Whole Ten Yards).

This dumb, forgettable flick tells the story of Julie. (Spy Kids' Alexa Vega). Like most fourteen year olds, many of her problems are typical of a kid her age. She has a crush on a boy that doesn't know she exists, she desperately wants to be popular, and she can't seem to escape the clutches of her caring but overbearing mother (Christopher Guest film regular Jane Lynch).

During a slumber party, Julie prepares for the night of her life, when a snotty, popular class mate challenges her and her friends to a little scavenger hunt competition. The winner will enjoy all the perqs that come with winning, while the loser will be forced to eat school lunch at a table located right next to trash dumpsters.

Everything that could possibly go wrong during the course of the evening, eventually does, as Julie and her buddies manage to get themselves into one stupid predicament after another.

Sleepover attempts to revive themes dealt with so splendidly by 80's teen angst guru John Hughes. The big dance sequence, and the moments that directly follow smack of Pretty in Pink and other such 80's fare, but there's nothing particularly honest, romantic or sweet about any of it. This would all be fine, mind you, if the film were remotely funny. It isn't.

I'm certainly not suggesting that all movies about teenagers need to be serious like Thirteen or Kids, but at the very least, Sleepover could have offered up some measure of realism. With edgier, more accurate, and far funnier films about teenagers out there (see the hilarious Mean Girls or the deadpan Napoleon Dynamite), there's just no reason to sit through this crap - regardless your age.

Alexa Vega was amusing in the Spy Kids movies, and even though she has a couple of nice moments here, I was never engaged or interested in her plight. Her snotty adversary (played by Sara Paxton) has quite obviously seen Legally Blonde one too many times, for her entire look seems to recall Reese Witherspoon's sweet Elle Woods from that infinitely more charming picture. Julie's underachieving brother (played by Sam Huntington) appears to be a dorky fusion of Harland Williams (Half Baked) and the under appreciated 80's comedy actor Stephen Geoffreys (Fright Night, Heaven Help Us).

Even Steven Carell (an absolute comic force to be reckoned with in the recent Anchorman), can't elevate this dull material. The one bright spot is Evan Peters who brings an odd but welcome sense of energy to the movie as dopey skater kid, but if you really want to see him at his best, watch for the upcoming Clipping Adam (a surprisingly touching drama that debuted at Utah's Eclipse Film Festival last year).

I could write page upon page describing what I didn't like about this movie, but I really don't see any sense in wasting the time. I will say that of all that I didn't like about Sleepover, the final straw was watching pop/punksters Allister butcher Oingo Boingo's "We Close Our Eyes." I can only take so much.

Upon doing a little research, I discovered that Sleepover director Joe Nussbaum was responsible for the wonderfully creative short "George Lucas in Love" back in 1999. That entertaining mini movie had more heart, innovation and charm in it's brief running time than all of Sleepover, and it was hilarious to boot.

To the parents out there who think I'm being too hard on Sleepover, consider this. There's a sequence in which our young heroines sneak their way into a bar/nightclub (how any of them actually get away with it, is beyond me), and even though the scene ends with one of the girls ordering a Shirley Temple, the whole thing was pretty disconcerting. In fact, it was downright disgusting.

I really don't know what demographic Sleepover was targeted for. You would suspect it was made for fourteen year old girls, but it even fails on that level because kids these days even younger than that are too smart to fall for a film this lame.