I went to see this movie with two girl-friends and a gay boy-friend - all three of us girls have known and loved the books for years, and the boy likes silly teen comedies like us.<br /><br />Although I adore the books, I didn't have very high expectations going in to this. I expected a decent movie, an okay one.<br /><br />This isn't okay or decent. It's just awful.<br /><br />None of the lead girls can act and they over-enunciate EVERYTHING (imagine a movie cast entirely with the Harry Potter series' Emma Watson, only NOT AS GOOD, and you have an idea of this movie's young female cast) everything good about the source material is changed, and most of what happens in the movie didn't happen in the books.<br /><br />The screen I was in was full of the key demographic for this movie, and yet nobody laughed. I heard much shuffling, sighing and groaning; and my lovely male friend was writhing in his seat, it was so terrible.<br /><br />The casting is this movie's first major problem, and the writing is the second. Nothing of what makes the book funny or its characters charming is in here. The events are all jumbled around distractingly, and the girls act like idiots. Everyone looks too young (come on, Ellen looks about eight years old). It's not coherent, and the made-up-for-the-movie plot about Georgia's birthday party is stupid.<br /><br />All the characters are unsympathetically written so you don't care about any of them. The only character that solicited anything from the audience is treated like a piece of dirt by Georgia, who does nothing but cry and whine throughout the whole bloody debacle.<br /><br />Characters are completely changed from their book counterparts - look out for Wet Lindsay especially - and the direction is dire.<br /><br />Lastly, the message of the film is repulsive. Once she gets a boyfriend, Georgia sees herself as "perfect" - because he tells her she is so! Georgia doesn't become a strong person on her own, she needs a man to tell her she is so.<br /><br />This is definitely a stinker, and one to be avoided at all costs. It's cheesy to the point of embarrassment, the dialogue is stupid, nobody has any chemistry, the soundtrack is terrible and it bears no resemblance to the original books. We were tempted to walk out.