Why Brit­ney Spears’ Cross­roads is an under­rat­ed com­ing-of-age classic

The year is 2002, and Ms Brit­ney Jean Spears is the biggest star in the world, about to pre­mière her first ever star­ring role in the road trip Cross­roads. Her self-titled third album, which had just come out at the end of the pre­vi­ous year, marked her tran­si­tion from teen star to a grown-up pop star ful­ly in con­trol, for a brief, glo­ri­ous moment before the hell­ish expe­ri­ence of men­tal health trou­bles, a very pub­lic break­down and being put in a con­ser­va­tor­ship that she only just was freed from.

The same year she record­ed Brit­ney, she also shot Cross­roads. The film came dur­ing a tran­si­tion­al peri­od in her career. Hav­ing been a child star, a teen pop idol and now, aged 19, the pow­er she had grown sub­stan­tial­ly, it was time for Brit­ney to move into the next, more adult, more con­trolled phase of her star­dom. Cross­roads was meant to be a key step into that next stage, a fig­u­ra­tive grad­u­a­tion into pop adulthood.

Her youth, lik­a­bil­i­ty and undis­put­ed tal­ent was a key of her appeal for girls – I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber beg­ging my par­ents for the ​‘Baby… One More Time’ CD and hold­ing it like a pre­cious teeny­bop­per gem – but it’s most­ly the sex­u­al­i­sa­tion of her girl-next-door image that was cen­tred. This peri­od was also marked by a low point in the bizarre cul­tur­al obses­sion with Britney’s vir­gin­i­ty and the ques­tion­ing of her ​‘role mod­el’ sta­tus for young girls.

Con­ceived by a music exec turned film pro­duc­er, Ann Car­li, who used to work for Britney’s record label, then-unknown future pow­er­house Shon­da Rhimes was com­mis­sioned to pen a script for Brit­ney to star in.

Cross­roads’ sim­ple premise is an end-of-high-school road trip shared by three for­mer besties, each now in dif­fer­ent stra­ta of high school soci­ety: Lucy (Spears) is an over­achiev­er who’s haunt­ed by her moth­er aban­don­ing her at age three; Mimi (Taryn Man­ning), heav­i­ly preg­nant, liv­ing in a trail­er park and with vague ambi­tions of becom­ing a singer; and Kit (Zoë Sal­dana), a stuck-up beau­ty obsessed with her upcom­ing wed­ding to her long-dis­tance fiancé. They were friends as kids, but on polar oppo­sites of the high school hier­ar­chy. Despite this, they each car­ry a heavy bur­den, with the film touch­ing on parental pres­sure, date-rape, adop­tion, and abandonment.

Lucy, a char­ac­ter built around Britney’s sweet­ness, direct­ly address­es the obses­sive scruti­ny real-life Brit­ney was under: an over­bear­ing father with a career planned laid out for her, a harsh work­load which detach­es her from her peers and a sub­plot around los­ing her vir­gin­i­ty that is pre­sent­ed as entire­ly her deci­sion, made on her own terms, nobody else’s busi­ness. With­in the con­text of who Brit­ney was in 2002, this is a pow­er­ful move, one that clos­es that door on any­one expect­ing or demand­ing to be includ­ed in the deci­sion-mak­ing process of a pop-star’s life.

The sto­ry of Cross­roads is aimed square­ly at teenage girls, built on Britney’s polite South­ern girl charm and easy-going chem­istry with her co-stars. The recep­tion from teenage girls was blind­ing­ly pos­i­tive, with test screen­ings scor­ing off the charts and the film recoup­ing its bud­get fivefold.

It was an indie affair designed for girls, and with a most­ly female cre­ative team behind it. Direct­ed by Tam­ra Davis (best known then for her music videos and the Drew Bar­ry­more-star­ring Gun­crazy), Britney’s effort­less cama­raderie with her co-stars is rarely seen in pop stars of her lev­el. Their stage pres­ence, high-octane the­atrics are meant to dom­i­nate a stage, so they often try to trans­plant that ener­gy onto the screen (except Cher, who is a sur­pris­ing­ly gen­er­ous screen pres­ence), but Brit­ney brings it down sev­er­al notch­es. The hilar­i­ty of watch­ing her sing back-up vocals to Taryn Man­ning is repeat­ed through­out the film, toy­ing with us until the film allows her to go Full Britney.

But despite the pos­i­tive reac­tion and the finan­cial suc­cess – or per­haps, because of this – crit­ics were vicious in a way that was dehu­man­is­ing, objec­ti­fy­ing and mock­ing in a com­bi­na­tion unique to the main­stream misog­y­ny of the 2000s. The New York Times sneered at Britney’s good-girl role: ​“although she is obvi­ous­ly a human being, her looks, singing, danc­ing and act­ing all sug­gest a com­put­erised com­pos­ite of some people’s ide­al of the post-teenage all-Amer­i­can girl.” Despite talk show hosts open­ly ask­ing her whether she was a vir­gin, the film was deemed ​“not appro­pri­ate for her young fans”. And in a leap of log­ic that defies all rea­son, crit­ics even ques­tioned her singing abil­i­ty (“She’s not yet an actress, not quite a singer”). The audacity.

Cross­roads was meant to be the first of her tran­si­tion into on-screen roles, but sad­ly remains the only true Brit­ney movie vehi­cle out­side of cameos on sit­coms and Austin Pow­ers. The expe­ri­ence, by all accounts, was a joy­ous and pos­i­tive one, and a sequel – Cross­roads 2: Cross Hard­er, as teased in Britney’s ​‘I Wan­na Go’ video – would be wel­come come­back of a new­ly freed, and hope­ful­ly hap­pi­er, Brit­ney Spears to the screen.