Laura (Kate Larson) is just your ordinary teenager going through all the trials and tribulations that high school life has to offer, but one thing, she's fiercely loyal to her best friends Riley (Marisa Lynea Hampton), David (Justin Sterner) and Ben (Raphael Ruggero), the latter also being her sort-of love interest, only that the two are actually able to admit it to one another. But she's not quite totally ordinary, as her dad's (Kevin Sizemore) a drummer with popular pop singer Luna (Amber Sweet Sterner, and thus on tour most of the time, but she has inherited her fondness of music from him as well as her songwriting talents. However, she's not one who's looking for the limelight, so when the school has a talent contest, she's more than willing to write a song, but leave it to her friends to perform, with Riley on lead vocals, and can't be persuaded by her friends to join in for the life of it. Then though on the day of the contest, Riley is handed laxatives by the school's decidedly mean queen bee Violet (Isabelle Almoyan), and since Violet thus has to sit out the show (literally, on the crapper), Laura agrees to take the stage in her place, just not to let everybody down. She's reluctant at first, but ultimately stuns everybody with her amazing voice - not only in the auditorium, but someone put her singing up on the internet, and the views pretty much explode. So the next day, her dad's agent Lee (Karen Abercrombie) wants to take her under her wing - but mum's (Leigh-Allyn Baker) is dead-set against it ... until dad has an almost-fatal accident. Then Laura just runs away and lets Lee form her into a cookie cutter pop star, complete with a made up romance with fellow singer Zac (Iain Tucker) - who's a nice enough guy but really no more interested in her, romantically, than she is in him. Thing is, will she lose her real friends hunting for fame? And will anybody ever find out that her amazing voice isn't hers but created by a magic microphone she found at a curio shop?

Now I won't for a minute claim that Into the Spotlight is free of high school rom-com clichées, as it quite clearly is not. But at the same time, the film also has a lot of heart, and a certain sweetness that actually feels real. And that the film was actually written by its teenaged lead Kate Larson sure adds some palpable authenticity to the proceedings, only enhanced by a subtle and unexcited directorial effort that keeps things grounded, as does a solid cast (with special praise going to Victoria Jackson doing comic relief as the principal never quite coming to grips with the intercom). And while teen rom-coms sure aren't everybody's thing (me included), this is actually a pretty sweet one.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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