Britney Spears is not a terrible actress

Over the years I've conflated the critical response to the Britney Spears vehicle Crossroads with the critical response to the Kelly Clarkson-Justin Guarini vehicle From Justin to Kelly. 

I think there are four reasons for this:

1) Both movies star a singer or singers who are trying their hand at acting;

2) Spears famously dated a different guy named Justin;

3) Both movies are (sort of) road trip movies; 

4) Neither movie propelled the stars on to other acting roles. 

And so I assumed both were bad, and that the stars were a big reason why they were bad.

That's definitely true of From Justin to Kelly. This movie's reputation was so bad that I saved it for a special February 29th viewing back in 2024. If you don't know, I try to watch the worst movie I can find every February 29th, though sometimes it backfires, as I actually sort of liked the movie I saw on February 29, 2020 (Christian Mingle).

It didn't backfire with From Justin to Kelly. It wouldn't be exaggerating very much to say that this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, though there are currently 22 movies ranked lower than it on my Flickchart. I guess that's still "one of the worst." And the poor craft of Clarkson and Guarini was certainly part of the problem, but by no means the biggest part. 

Crossroads is different. I wouldn't say this is a "good" movie, but it flirted with goodness enough for me to consider going with a three-star rating on Letterboxd, the minimum star rating for a movie to have been judged as "good." I opted for 2.5 stars instead. And though I don't do this myself, I know some people indicate the kind of "close but no cigar" feeling I have toward Crossroads by giving it 2.5 stars but also a heart. Me, I don't use heart.

And Spears? She ranges from perfectly adequate to actually quite touching. I was specifically watching her microexpressions to see how she was reacting to new information and other dialogue in the scene, and I really found them quite acceptable. Then there's a part where she has a big emotional breakdown that I thought was credible too. 

Of course, the caliber of the supporting cast has something to do with why this film is better than it might otherwise be. While From Justin and Kelly had essentially no known actors propping it up, Crossroads has future Oscar winner Zoe Saldana, as well as Taryn Manning, Justin Long, Kim Cattrall and Dan Aykroyd. But I also found the writing to be pretty decent and the direction to be, again, perfectly adequate.

While Spears never starred in a movie again after Crossroads -- she actually did appear in one earlier film, Longshot, as "flight attendant" -- she did have a couple appearances in TV shows, playing someone other than herself. But more often than not when she did appear again, she was playing Britney Spears, the role she was born to play.

I hope critics weren't too hard on her at the time, because a) we know she had a bit of a mental break in the long run, and that wouldn't have helped, and b) it wasn't deserved. She could have been a more than competent actress for a couple years if things had worked out differently. As is, I'm glad there's a little showcase for what could have been in Crossroads.