Baby Beauty Queens | TV Review
Submitted by Liam Tucker on 07/28/2010 - 13:32
Baby Beauty Queens may have been scheduled for a longer outing, but there was so little interesting content, even in this half hour, that you can see why it wasn’t expanded. It’s likely the commissioners expected some outrage-inducing, pushy mother footage and, to some extent, they got that. But the viewing public is now so familiar with onscreen portrayals of that kind of carry on that the feeling immediately hits that we’ve seen it all before.
Usually with this kind of thing we’re given at least a hint of jeopardy. Both girls – Eden and Amber - were contesting a winning place in a beauty pageant called Mini Miss UK, and you might’ve expected this to run in the tradition of documentaries like Spellbound. That fantastic feature film followed school-aged kids as they learned how to spell impossible synonyms, with the ending competition footage becoming completely riveting due to our fondness for the stars. Similarly, Sounds Like Teen Spirit was a moving, real life story of a girl from Georgia’s attempts to crack Eurovision and the contest itself was the real hinge of the film. But in Baby Beauty Queens, any jeopardy was instantly vaporised when the voiceover announced how the two had fared right in the introduction.
Appetites truly dulled, we spent the rest of the thirty minutes watching likable kids, Eden and Amber, being led slightly astray by their mothers. There was some great footage of Sally, Amber’s mother, instilling terrible habits in her own daughter when they went out clothes shopping, and we received some decent insight into the mind of a pushy mum as she was interviewed. She was blatant about the fact she was projecting her own frustration at having never gone on to stardom onto her daughter, and more interviews along those lines might have offered some depth.
But because of the lack of structure and the instantly revealed ending, we were only left with a vaguely involving story about two spoiled kids being treated like princesses by bored mothers. You can see that kind of behaviour in any provincial shopping centre in the UK, so why it deserved the BBC’s money thrown at it, I couldn’t tell you.
Liam Tucker is the founder of Watch With Mothers
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Over to BBC Three for a surprisingly brief look into the world of children’s’ beauty pageants. A 29 minute run-time in BBC Three territory is no more than a flash in the pan, as usually their lightweight documentaries span entire hours, delivering very little and rarely failing to disappoint.
Baby Beauty Queens may have been scheduled for a longer outing, but there was so little interesting content, even in this half hour, that you can see why it wasn’t expanded. It’s likely the commissioners expected some outrage-inducing, pushy mother footage and, to some extent, they got that. But the viewing public is now so familiar with onscreen portrayals of that kind of carry on that the feeling immediately hits that we’ve seen it all before.
Usually with this kind of thing we’re given at least a hint of jeopardy. Both girls – Eden and Amber - were contesting a winning place in a beauty pageant called Mini Miss UK, and you might’ve expected this to run in the tradition of documentaries like Spellbound. That fantastic feature film followed school-aged kids as they learned how to spell impossible synonyms, with the ending competition footage becoming completely riveting due to our fondness for the stars. Similarly, Sounds Like Teen Spirit was a moving, real life story of a girl from Georgia’s attempts to crack Eurovision and the contest itself was the real hinge of the film. But in Baby Beauty Queens, any jeopardy was instantly vaporised when the voiceover announced how the two had fared right in the introduction.
Appetites truly dulled, we spent the rest of the thirty minutes watching likable kids, Eden and Amber, being led slightly astray by their mothers. There was some great footage of Sally, Amber’s mother, instilling terrible habits in her own daughter when they went out clothes shopping, and we received some decent insight into the mind of a pushy mum as she was interviewed. She was blatant about the fact she was projecting her own frustration at having never gone on to stardom onto her daughter, and more interviews along those lines might have offered some depth.
But because of the lack of structure and the instantly revealed ending, we were only left with a vaguely involving story about two spoiled kids being treated like princesses by bored mothers. You can see that kind of behaviour in any provincial shopping centre in the UK, so why it deserved the BBC’s money thrown at it, I couldn’t tell you.
Liam Tucker is the founder of Watch With Mothers
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