Britney Spears' first foray into acting didn't go so well, but over 20 years after its release, the resulting movie has been picking up a lot of steam. No-where is that more clear than on Netflix UK, where streaming fans have rediscovered this noughties 'classic'.
This movie is called Crossroads, and after being added to Netflix on Thursday, February 15, it's become one of the streamer's most-watched movies! It currently sits at the fourth spot in the Top 10 movies list, above some recent Originals like Players and Einstein and the Bomb.
Crossroads was a vehicle for Spears, putting her as one of three leads alongside Zoe Saldana and Taryn Manning. It tells the story of three teenage girls who go on a road trip to Los Angeles and rediscover their friendship on the way. As one of the leads is Spears, this obviously includes lots of singing and musical elements, but they're a surprising amount of weirdly dark content too. But who doesn't like a bit of death, abuse and general nastiness in their teenage popstar vehicles?
Directed by Billy Madison and Guncrazy director Tamra Davis and based on a script written by iconic TV powerhouse Shonda Rhimes, the movie made a profit but was absolutely eviscerated by critics.
Reviewers downplayed the formulaic and cliched feel of the movie, and it sits at only 15% Critics' Score on Rotten Tomatoes, which probably isn't the way Spears thought her acting career would begin. She hasn't had a starring role in a movie or TV show since, not including lots of guest appearances.
Since the 2002 release of Crossroads, though, the movie has been enjoying something of a comeback. In late 2023 it was re-released in cinemas to celebrate the release of Spears' biography, "The Woman In Me", and new remixes of Spears' songs in the movie were released at the same time too.
Crossroads has never been available to stream anywhere before this Netflix release, so fans of Spears or early-noughties popstar vehicles can finally get a chance to watch it online. It hasn't even seen a physical re-release since its original 2002 VHS and DVD run, so it's previously been very hard to watch.
Perhaps that's why this 20-year-old bomb is suddenly popular on Netflix, and we'll have to see whether 2020s audiences are kinder on the Spears movie than 2000s ones were.
