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PLOT: A model turned actress and a singer-songwriter try to build their careers and tend to their love lives, too. Fame almost wrecks everything!
You can say this much about Undiscovered: It allows Ashlee Simpson to have a better feature film debut than that made by her sister, Jessica.
(Mind you, in the annals of sibling rivalry, it may not be possible for a movie worse than Dukes Of Hazzard to be created. Ever.)
Undiscovered is a pack of romantic nonsense arranged to suit a pre-teen audience. That means lots of closeups of beautiful people, namely Steven Strait as Luke, a sensitive singer-songwriter (beautiful smile) and of Pell James as Brier, a sensitive model (beautiful smile) hoping to become an actress.
These two pretty persons glimpse each other in the New York subway, and then Luke is gone to L.A. to purse this singing/recording thing. The course of true love never did run smooth, but within two years, Brier also goes west to become an actress, and so our star-crossed lovers are once again on the same coast. Too bad Brier is dating a famous (but cheating!) rock star ...
Brier goes to acting classes and there she meets Clea, which is how Ashlee Simpson gets into the story. Clea is a singer as well as an aspiring actress. And she knows Luke! Together, Clea and Brier decide to help Luke's career through gossip and hype, getting him photographed with a supermodel (Shannyn Sossamon) and signed up with an A&R guy (Fisher Stevens) and all that.
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Oddly, Clea and Brier never sit down to talk about their mutual sad yuppie names or how they got them, but that could be in the sequel.
Anyway, Luke's newfound fame doesn't suit him, and ends up pushing him farther away from Brier. How will these two ever get together? Let's drag Carrie Fisher and Peter Weller into the story!
That should do it.
Undiscovered is a story about up-and-coming talent and the need for recognition. It's pure escapist fare, a fantasy about true love and about making it in the entertainment biz, two major myths to which you may not wish to expose your children.
However, the romance factor is squeaky clean and the good-looking cast is easy on the eyes, so it all unfolds like an innocuous after-school TV movie. Undiscovered has a handful of laughs, some pretty singing by Ashlee Simpson and the attractive presence of Carrie Fisher. So. That's entertainment.
More or less.
(This film is rated PG)