Odd Girl Out

Year: 2005

Country: USA

Tagline: The secret life of girls... it's not pretty.  »

Plot: Vanessa Snyder (Alexa Vega) is an admired eighth-grader in her school. She has a loving single mother, Barbara (Lisa Vidal), who is proud of her well-placed daughter. Vanessa is also "in" with the popular clique, led by her best friend Stacy Larson (Leah Pipes), the queen bee, and Nikki Rodriguez (Elizabeth Rice), who is secretly jealous of Stacy and Vanessa's closeness. On the exterior of this exclusive friendship circle is the outsider, Emily (Shari Dyon Perry), and the wannabe, Tiffany (Alicia Morton), who is dying to make it into the pack.The nightmare begins when Nikki tricks Vanessa into getting close to Tony (Chad Biagini), a boy whom Stacy (and somewhat Vanessa) has a crush on. A web of lies, nasty rumors, and manipulation ensues, and Vanessa is ostracized by the clique for "backstabbing" Stacy. Helpless, Vanessa soon faces the conflict and violence from her former friends and other popular girls whom she doesn't even know. Nikki gets Tiffany accepted into the clique, and Tiffany becomes Nikki's sidekick at poisoning the others against Vanessa. Although Nikki is the main girl who is tormenting Vanessa, Stacy plays her part by pretending she's still Vanessa's best friend and not stopping the attacks on her. Vanessa is slowly pushed out of class activities, called names, socially isolated and worst of all, her tormentors create a webpage about her on which they put humiliating photos of Vanessa, along with expressions of hatred towards her.Emily tries to convince Vanessa not to go running back to the clique, but Vanessa keeps attempting to seek reconciliation with Stacy, to disastrous results. The bullying escalates, with Stacy, Nikki, Tiffany and others cornering Vanessa inside a bathroom and verbally brutalizing her, including degrading every aspect of her and revealing her embarrassing secrets. That night, Vanessa has a nervous breakdown and chops all her hair off. Then she starts skipping school, fearing the agony in the hallways. Stacy offers a fake truce to Vanessa and asks for help on an assignment. Vanessa sends Stacy her paper, only to have Stacy copy it and make it look like Vanessa copied Stacy's paper.Once Vanessa shows her mother a print-out of comments about Vanessa's hair, Barbara tries to help by informing the school about the bullying, to no avail as the principal is unable to take disciplinary action against non-physical bullying. Barbara even tries to talk to Stacy's mother, Denise (Rhoda Griffis) but only ends up straining their friendship. Even an adult like Barbara is helpless in the face of teen violence.Vanessa's spirits are suddenly lifted when Stacy invites her to her birthday party. After preparing, she arrives at a club, which is not the site of the party. When discovering this, Vanessa goes ballistic. She takes an overdose of her mother's sleeping pills, but survives and just passes out.In the hospital, Barbara reveals to her daughter that she was also emotionally bullied when she was a teenager, which caused her to encourage Vanessa to stay friends with Stacy. She says that she never dealt with it herself and wished Vanessa would learn self-defense.During a class session, Emily accuses Stacy of nearly killing Vanessa for her actions. She is also the only one of Vanessa's classmates to visit her in the hospital and befriends her.Back home, Barbara spots malicious instant messages popping up on Vanessa's computer and sends them to the school principal. The culprits have been revealed to be Nikki, Tiffany, and Ezra (Joey Nappo), another tormentor. If they deny that they cyber-bullied Vanessa, they would be expelled from the school and not graduate. When Vanessa returns to school, she and Stacy reunite after Stacy convinces her that she's sorry about the bullying. They IM each other about how great it feels to be best friends again. Then graduation day comes and the final conflict happens when after the graduation, Nikki and Tiffany read aloud the chat between Vanessa and Stacy, which Stacey had sent to Nikki, and which Nikki had printed out.Vanessa finds Stacy and confronts her, something that no one has dared to do before. Vanessa brings everything down on Stacy and sees right through her offer of false friendship. Stacy does not want to fight with Vanessa, as they are in front of the entire eighth grade class and parents, and tries to hug her, but Vanessa pushes her away and ends the fight by saying, "You have nothing that I want.".The film concludes with a humiliated Stacy fleeing the school after having her methods fly back in her face. She is dethroned, and her two "henchwomen", Nikki and Tiffany, are left powerless without a leader. Onlookers begin to applaud Vanessa for her courageous actions as she hugs Emily, the only true friend she's had. Barbara, who had witnessed the whole exchange, watches with pride and happiness as they both leave for an after-party, permanently disbanding the bullying clique.Vanessa, one of the most popular girl in school, sinks into despair when former friends ostracize her and make her the target of ugly rumors when she likes the same guy Stacey as a queen bee does.

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