Currently certified "fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes, Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring is a step into the teen world of obsession with style, celebrities and wealth. A group of friends break into the luxurious houses of celebs such as Paris Hilton and Orlando Bloom. The ending is known from the beginning, and even having never seen this movie one knows how it ends: badly. As Emma Watson's vapid character Nicki states, it's karma.
Coppola doesn't take us to a magical world of fantasy; the comment she is making is that as a society we are obsessed with fame, and these kids went to shocking (and yet not so shocking) lengths to obtain a glamorous lifestyle. So why did they steal up to $3 million worth of stuff? Because they could. The desire to be part of the celebrity lifestyle was greater than common sense -- "Is this wrong in anyway? Could this somehow backfire horribly and mean serving jail time?" -- but it's so obviously going to go wrong that I just couldn't look away. So why should we care about the story of The Bling Ring? Personally I wanted to see this because I totally fell for their marketing ("omg lol Hermione Granger doing drugs and pole dancing!") and I've always been a fan of Sofia Coppola. However, The Bling Ring differs from Coppola's earlier films since it's less about the individual and finding yourself in this crazy world. The Bling Ring is a black comedy telling you something we all already know - as a society, we're obsessed with extravagance and the pursuit of wealth, which is why we place celebrities on ridiculously high pedestals.
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