Who killed the Tween Girl Movie?

In 2006, tween girls were spoilt for choice at the cin­e­ma. On the big screen, Aman­da Bynes had board­ed a transat­lantic plane for What a Girl Wants, mer­maids were mak­ing a splash in Aqua­ma­rine, while Mary-Kate and Ash­ley Olsen were Win­ning Lon­don and our hearts. Over at Dis­ney, there was a seem­ing­ly end­less stream of straight-to-DVD, com­ing-of-age sto­ries for tweens, from Hilary Duff’s Cadet Kel­ly, to Bren­da Song’s Wendy Wu. A Cin­derel­la Sto­ry had moved from its the­atri­cal release to gar­gan­tu­an DVD sales and The Sis­ter­hood of the Trav­el­ing Pants was a break time hot topic.

Ear­ly 2000s tweens had an unpar­al­leled list of mid-to-low-bud­get, rapid­ly shot sto­ries that were made specif­i­cal­ly for them, cap­tur­ing all the com­plex­i­ties most young girls were con­tend­ing with: how to han­dle being unpop­u­lar; unre­quit­ed crush­ing; embar­rass­ing par­ents and the desire to grow up. These films, imper­fect though they are, car­ry a spe­cif­ic lega­cy for mil­len­ni­al women, they’re ulti­mate­ly a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of com­fort. Blend­ing a heady mix of wish ful­fill­ment, low stakes (in the case of Pass­port to Paris, the Olsen Twins’ goals includ­ed ​‘ensure Grandad spends less time at work’) and roman­tic sub­plots that most­ly result­ed in sen­ti­ments like ​‘we should date in five years time’.

But, even in a broad­er cul­tur­al sense, 00s tween girls were being catered to like nev­er before. Over on the small screen, Han­nah Mon­tana, iCar­ly and Tra­cy Beaker were dom­i­nat­ing tele­vi­sion, while Jacque­line Wil­son and Meg Cabot’s tween fic­tion ruled the lit­er­ary charts. There were even the likes of Mizz Mag­a­zine, Bliss and Go Girl! – pub­li­ca­tions designed specif­i­cal­ly for tween girls, avail­able at every cor­ner shop and stuffed with free nail pol­ish, glit­ter pens and keyrings, plus vital per­son­al­i­ty quizzes for sleep­over entertainment.

Despite the fact that young women typ­i­cal­ly read above their age group, these mag­a­zines seemed well aware of the audi­ence they served, blend­ing end­less, non-patro­n­is­ing advice on every­thing from insert­ing your first tam­pon to back­comb­ing your side fringe. This was the ear­ly 2000s and pre-teens were orange-toned, foun­da­tion-stained bun­dles of awk­ward­ness. More notice­ably, the gap between child­hood and teenagers had nev­er been clear­er. There were teens, those 14-and-over (who watched Glee and Skins, read Cos­mo and knew how to style a body­con dress) and there were tweens: the 9 – 13 year olds, who still had all of the hor­ror of their teenage years yet to come.

But as we approached the end of the ear­ly 00s, there was a pal­pa­ble shift in pop cul­ture. Tam­my Girl, a UK high street sta­ple that catered specif­i­cal­ly to tween girls, shut­tered in 2005, and Mar­vel films took over cin­e­ma begin­ning with 2008’s Iron Man. The strong­hold Dis­ney had on the tween zeit­geist began to waiv­er as Han­nah Mon­tana became Miley Cyrus. There was a clear but dis­tinct shift towards a more mature approach to tweenagers and teens.

This in itself wasn’t a bad thing. The 00s famous­ly lacked any rep­re­sen­ta­tion for women of colour and queer char­ac­ters were large­ly non-exis­tent except for thin­ly veiled stereo­types. Then there’s the fact that not a sin­gle über-styl­ish bohemi­an bed­room in a tween movie resem­bled any­thing close to the spaces of most British tweens.

And it’s also worth acknowl­edg­ing that a heady dose of nos­tal­gia can make almost any 90s film appear far less prob­lem­at­ic than they actu­al­ly are. Many of these clas­sics have aged as poor­ly as you’d imag­ine and by no means offer teens any­thing close to tan­gi­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But these films did, how­ev­er, have a strong for­mu­la – one that pri­ori­tised com­fort and gen­tle wish ful­fil­ment, and most impor­tant­ly, a sense of opti­mism that feels very dis­tant for today’s tweens.

While Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade high­lights the lone­li­ness and awk­ward­ness of the tween years in all its glo­ry and Gre­ta Gerwig’s Lady Bird is eas­i­ly one the best com­ing-of-age sto­ries from the 2010s, these films are made with nos­tal­gia, with more mature view­ers in mind, to be watched with a heady blend of rose-tint­ed glass­es and gen­uine intro­spec­tion. They com­fort our inner tween selves by recog­nis­ing their strug­gles, but they’re dis­tinct­ly not made for the present generation.

On the oth­er side of this 2010s teen renais­sance, we have the block­buster: the seem­ing­ly inter­minable churn of super­hero films. These were cost­ly, big-bud­get films designed to deliv­er max­i­mum returns. And for all intents and pur­pos­es, they did just that. 2008’s Iron Man saw $585 mil­lion return from a $140 mil­lion bud­get, while 2001’s The Princess Diaries deliv­ered $165 mil­lion on a $26 mil­lion bud­get. Pro­duc­ers took note and began to shift focus, mak­ing gar­gan­tu­an invest­ments in cin­e­mat­ic uni­vers­es that could span an end­less array of films and deliv­er big­ger returns than the Sat­ur­day morn­ing tween audi­ences were ever able to offer. These films were undoubt­ed­ly bridg­ing a gap for tween boys, as they start­ed to move to more mature cin­e­ma, but for girls who have no inter­est in super­heroes, it’s a dif­fer­ent story.

Even on the small screen projects designed specif­i­cal­ly for tweens such as the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Baby-Sit­ters Club reboot on Net­flix, which was giv­en just two sea­sons, despite an out­cry from audi­ences. Pro­duc­er and writer, Rachel Shuk­ert remarked in an inter­view with Vul­ture that ​“it seems like girls are expect­ed to go straight from Doc McStuffins to Eupho­ria.” The gap that was once so clear between child­hood and ado­les­cence had closed. The space care­ful­ly carved out for tweens too young for Not­ting Hill and too old for the lat­est Dis­ney ani­ma­tion to unpack their grow­ing pains has been decimated.

It’s easy to blame the inter­net, Tik­Tok or wan­ing atten­tion spans for the death of the tween movie, or to even sim­ply insist that tween girls are grow­ing up far too fast these days (a sen­ti­ment that has been shared by almost every gen­er­a­tion since the inven­tion of childhood.)

But with­out any rep­re­sen­ta­tion or media for tweens to engage with, they inevitably have to shift into more mature ideas. From the nine-year-old Sepho­ra Kids, who, stuck in the gap between unset­tling fam­i­ly vlogs and Eupho­ria​’s 11-year-old drug deal­er named Ash­tray, tweens have had to carve out their own area. Even if it’s a space that was dis­tinct­ly not made for them.

While the term YA (young adult) began in pub­lish­ing, it rapid­ly spawned into all ele­ments of cul­ture, span­ning bril­liant films like My Old Ass, Do Revenge and even shows like The Umbrel­la Acad­e­my. In the lit­er­ary world, YA titles have grown 48.2% since 2018. But com­pa­ra­bly mid­dle-grade titles (or tween as we know them) have seen a pub­lish­ing lull of around 8% per year. This is prob­a­bly because YA has an addi­tion­al ben­e­fit in all forms of art – unlike tween projects that can be sac­cha­rine or sim­plis­tic to adults, YA eas­i­ly bridges the divide to adult audi­ences, ensur­ing a dou­ble revenue.

In 2025, the tween girl mag­a­zines that were once so promi­nent have fold­ed. The shops that catered to them are now Y2K mem­o­ries worn by 20-some­things and the movies cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for tween girls are a dis­tant memory.

While they can still head to the cin­e­ma on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing and catch the lat­est Mar­vel film, these, tra­di­tion­al­ly, have been far more pop­u­lar with tween boys and rarely cen­tre expe­ri­ences of young women. When they do, the recep­tion tends to be frosty, with Cap­tain Mar­vel and Black Wid­ow both expe­ri­enc­ing misog­y­nis­tic review bomb­ing at the time of their release. This doesn’t encour­age young girls to seek them out.

There’s no doubt that tweens in 2025 have far less to feel opti­mistic about and their media reflects this. As life imi­tates art, cin­e­ma has a way of hold­ing up a lens to our pri­or­i­ties. We arguably have less low-bud­get teen films, less easy-to-watch com­fort media because, in many ways, we’ve for­got­ten the val­ue of them beyond their rev­enue-mak­ing power.

It’s hard to remem­ber being an 11-year-old weep­ing over Cadet Kel­ly​’s baton rou­tine or excit­ed­ly fol­low­ing Mary-Kate and Ashley’s lat­est hijinks, espe­cial­ly as these were most­ly crit­i­cal­ly panned by the adult audi­ence who engaged with them. The Princess Diaries was described by Anna Smith at Empire as ​“A light, uneven Pyg­malion sto­ry that may win young girls over with its wish ful­fill­ment theme and teen movie sta­ples but does not live up to the expec­ta­tions cre­at­ed by the cast and direc­tor” while many beloved tween sta­ples have poor Rot­ten Toma­toes scores (16% for Raise Your Voice, 14% for Con­fes­sions of a Teenage Dra­ma Queen) reflect­ing the gen­er­al con­tem­po­rary sen­ti­ment about these films.

But we for­get that these films were made with the express inten­tion of win­ning over young girls. Unlike today’s media, these films weren’t designed with nuance and adult­hood in mind, nor were they made for our intro­spec­tive teenage selves. They weren’t designed to crossover with adults, they were craft­ed with the express pur­pose of serv­ing tween girls with a heady dose of opti­mism and com­fort – some­thing tween girls sore­ly need as they grow.

And it’s not that these films have dis­ap­peared entire­ly. In fact, the lim­it­ed con­tent they do have has been received with far bet­ter crit­i­cal recep­tion than their ear­ly coun­ter­parts. Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet and You Are So Not Invit­ed To My Bat Mitz­vah, both deliv­ered a joy­ful blend of tween com­e­dy, romance and plen­ty of thought­ful themes. In fact, Dead­line Hol­ly­wood described Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet as a ​“human, won­der­ful stu­dio movie com­e­dy you might have for­got­ten Hol­ly­wood knew how to make any more”.

So, as tween girls lurch between Sponge­Bob and reruns of Skins, scrab­bling for the lim­it­ed con­tent avail­able to them, could the tween girl com­fort movie make a return? I hope so.