The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola's 2013 rich kid heist movie, in which a group of valley kids decide to make a habit of breaking into celebrities' homes and stealing their shit with an almost scary ease. Eventually, they get caught, because teens as a whole are about as equally oblivious as all the rich people who leave keys under their mats. This is their story.
I can't imagine I have anything unique to say about The Bling Ring. But I refuse to read any critic's old reviews before I write this review for PoYB. If you've been thinking about The Bling Ring for seven years now, and my criticisms are old hat to you, then please know that it's not on purpose. This is just how I feel.
And how I feel is that The Bling Ring serves no important purpose. It has nothing important to say about society at large or about any specific type of person. I mean, I guess you could make an argument that we are supposed to, what, empathize with these shitty kids? Or, conversely, are we supposed to empathize with the shitty rich celebrities that they steal from? Both? Neither? Who the fuck cares, right?
I could almost see a version of this movie that is able to say something meaningful about the dangers of excess and vanity. The fact that someone like Paris Hilton has entirely separate rooms to stockpile her collections of jewelry and handbags and designer shoes is fucking disgusting, and maybe some other film could've done anything with that fact other than gawk at it.
Does Paris Hilton deserve to be burglarized? Almost as surely as Jeff Bezos needs a guillotine. But not by these little shits, these five oblivious teens who are stealing for the thrill of it. The character of Rebecca could've perhaps been the most interesting figure in this movie—various other characters obliquely question her motivations, e.g. "Why did she want to steal so badly?"—but even that shit was half-baked.
No, this was pretty much the Beverly Hills equivalent of a stock horror movie, but instead of death, it's theft of Louis Vuitton. The movie is built scene by repetitious scene, the gratuitous crime being the point, no subtext in sight. The Bling Ring watches an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and answers the question "What if I was physically in that home, right now?" I have no interest in that television show, and I certainly have no interest in Rachel Bilson's living quarters, so I really didn't have any interest in what The Bling Ring had to show me.
Like her pal Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola misses the point here. Yes, there's glamour in this lifestyle, but should there be? And if not, why does your movie make it seem like there's nothing wrong with getting caught up in it? Nikki ends up serving a 30-day prison sentence for her crimes. Like Jordan Belfort, I'm sure she didn't learn a goddamn thing.
I'm just wondering what the point of this movie was. Of course it was a well-made film, with lots of beautiful cinematography as the camera panned over mountains of sparkling diamond-encrusted purses and high heels. I think 2020 has just embittered me to the reality that Paris Hilton could live like this while people are starving in the streets. Maybe it's unfair of me to ask a 2013 movie to speak to society's specific ills seven years later.
But those ills have always existed. They have just come to the forefront because of an orange fascist and a pervasive respiratory disease. And if you're looking for some type of solution, or even just a way to forget for a while, then The Bling Ring is not the movie for you.
GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5
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