Teenage love is a strange and confusing thing, and even more so when your mother's deadbeat boyfriend wants to date you. That's the problem facing Lena, a 16-year-old girl living in the Bronx. Lena is older than her years: she is often the more responsible one, picking up the pieces after Victor, her mom's latest flame, starts moving in on Lena. The film has the opportunity to take a particularly chilling and awkward situation and make a powerful family drama, but "Babygirl" falls flat. The characters make unrealistic decisions that don't agree with their personality. Yainis Ynoa, as Lena, shows promise, but the script never tells her what her character really wants, so she gets lost in the plot. Lena swears she will teach Victor a lesson, but then she ends up falling in and out of love with him.
The film is a jumbled mess of indecision.
Erin Bell can be reached at erin.bell@student. shu.edu.
