Just Bea (Bare Bea) Movie Review:


“Just Bea” is a teen sex comedy in a similar vein to American Pie. Bea is part of a gang of sixteen year old girls, and the only one who hasn’t yet had sex. This dominates her thoughts – she can’t stand being the last, and is determined to know what she is missing out on.

She vents her frustrations by writing for the school paper, stories based on the antics of her friends, and herself. She has a natural talent for observation, and longs to pursue it further at college. As she says “I need to write, or my head will explode!”

She develops a massive crush on the most popular boy in school, and can’t believe her luck when he begins to show an interest in her. But her friends have a motto: “Never lose your virginity to someone you love”. They think the first time always sucks, so should be gotten out of the way before embarking on anything serious.

So they hurriedly try to set her up with Anders, an older guy, believing that it will be a one - off introduction to the world of sex.
But things don’t exactly develop according to plan, and Bea soon finds herself in a situation that’s completely out of her control.
Bea’s story is one that young girls all over the world will be able to sympathise with: that difficult stage between being a girl and a woman. Hang on - didn’t Britney Spears write a song about that?

This is a movie that’s not afraid to say that love aint always like you see in the movies, preferring to show that there are no real rules on how to learn about sex, and accepting the fact that everyone is different. “Bea” doesn’t descend into being preachy, or burden itself try to be an agony aunt.
It deals with the usual teen topics like peer pressure, relationships and growing up, but without that stern parental tone that tends to take the edge off a lot of other movies.

As a self - consciously hip, frank tale told from a Scandinavian perspective it’s a bit coarser than what we’d usually see targeted at the mid to late teen market. It’s hard to see this appealing in any great way to guys, or girls over the age of 18 because it seems to target this demograph regardless of the risk of alienating everyone else.

Using “Ally Mc Beal” style pauses in music to highlight the awkwardness is a great idea, but the very loud, in-yer-face soundtrack, (a band called “Surferrosa”), is over-used and repetitive.

The acting is good, but the script is quite shallow and often doesn’t give the actors a lot to work with.
It would have been a sweeter film had it also explored love a bit more - there’s no chemistry between characters to speak of and because of this the sex scenes are very unconvincing. This isn’t through fault of the actors; it’s just that the script and direction don’t seem to really allow for any.

With a lot of balls but not much heart, “Just Bea” is just average.

Terresa Gaffney

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