Spears' one-note acting sends 'Crossroads' astray

By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

Oops, she's really done it this time. That chirpy songbird Britney Spears has popped up with more mindless drivel. The diva-in-training stars in Crossroads, which is less a movie than a mind-numbingly dull road trip that offers plenty of opportunity for girlish high jinks, radio duets and adorable mugging.

A role model (sigh) for young girls and a sex symbol for young boys, Spears is ever-mindful of looking her cutest. OK, we're covered there, but acting is another thing. Sure, she tries to emote (she cries, pouts, bursts into fits of giggles), but it's all one note.

As a good girl who graduates from high school with stellar grades, Spears tragically has never gone to a football game, party or "just hung out." She's named valedictorian — mercifully, we're spared her words of wisdom — and laments to her father (Dan Aykroyd in a thankless role) that she missed out on all the fun.

Enter the girl power. They're no Thelma and Louises, but Britney and her two Georgia gal pals (Zoe Saldana, Taryn Manning) take to the road and set their sights on California. Rekindling the friendship they had as 10-year-olds, the three find a way to parlay their singing into an act, while transforming their clothes into glamorously skimpy costumes. Britney proves she's not that innocent when she wows the locals in a Louisiana bar by suggestively crooning Joan Jett's I Love Rock-'n-Roll. Along the way, Britney falls for a hunk (Anson Mount) and loses that pesky virginal stigma.

Not since That Thing You Do! have we been subjected so repeatedly to a movie tune. Not only must we hear her warble "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman" several times, we must also endure her intone the lyrics as "poetry."

Such foolishness proves Britney's still a girl, not yet an actress.