'Sleepover' Is An Imperfect, Nostalgic Reminder Of 2000s Girlhood

This article includes plot details from 2024′s “Time Cut” and 2004′s “Sleepover.”

“Spend a day in 2003!” a Netflix social media account wrote in late October. In an accompanying clip from the new nostalgic slasher “Time Cut,” a high school hallway is dotted with velour tracksuits, Heelys, Ugg-style boots and low-rise jeans.

Generation Z teen Lucy Field (Madison Bailey) has accidentally time-traveled to April 2003, giving her a chance to rewrite history and save her millennial sister, Summer (Antonia Gentry), from being murdered by a serial killer. Lucy walks the school hallway and spots the sister she’s never known. Hilary Duff’s “So Yesterday” (which actually wasn’t out yet in April 2003) washes over the scene. The 2000s-themed soundtrack is fantastic overall, featuring Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated,” Michelle Branch’s “All You Wanted,” Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” Fat Joe’s “What’s Luv?” and Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag.”

Netflix’s social media post made headlines and was shared thousands of times. Observers claimed that the costuming and styling in “Time Cut” were historically inaccurate and incomplete representations of 2003 social groups. These complaints came from at least some folks who lived through the era. I wasn’t yet a teenager in the early 2000s, but I spent that time watching teen celebs in films like “What a Girl Wants,” “Freaky Friday,” “The Lizzie McGuire Movie,” “A Cinderella Story” and “The Princess Diaries.” While I pondered the meaning of “Time Cut,” I turned to my well-worn DVD of 2004’s “Sleepover,” a comedy that was outperformed at the box office by “A Cinderella Story” but is nonetheless equally linked to my tween years.

I write about nostalgia often, and I enjoy a familiar movie’s elasticity — bouncing me back to my childhood self while simultaneously stretching my understanding of the film through adult eyes. Where “Time Cut” lets its characters reroute their paths in 2003, the teens in “Sleepover” remain as fixed in time as my memories of growing up with glitter gel pens and feather boas.

Alexa PenaVega (then Alexa Vega) stars in “Sleepover” as Julie Corky, a teen with the dream bedroom for a 2000s girl — swirls of purple, pink, yellow and green on a wall; coordinating paper lanterns strung across the room; magazine scraps in a quintessential wall collage; an Apple computer with AOL services ready to go.

It wasn’t until 2006 that “Sleepover” began shaping me in a profound way. At the end of sixth grade, two of my friends were over for a slumber party. I’m pretty sure that I wrote a fan letter to Miley Cyrus — which I (sadly) never sent — and that we listened to Aly & AJ’s debut album.

Before we went to bed, we also watched “Sleepover,” and I wondered what it would be like to have a night like Julie’s. She and her three guests sneak out of the house to complete a scavenger hunt that involves stealing a pair of her crush’s boxer shorts. The rising freshmen are competing for the “lunch spot” next to a fountain, where the popular kids sit in high school.

In "Sleepover," there are those who eat at the coveted lunch spot and those who dine next to dumpsters.

Alamy

A frenemy named Staci (Sara Paxton) leads an opposing camp with her best friend Liz (Brie Larson) and two groupies. Staci and Liz reinforce the movie’s central social dichotomy: There are those who eat at the coveted lunch spot and those who dine next to dumpsters.

“Cool, uncool. Staci and Liz, me,” Julie tells best friend Hannah (Mika Boorem) as they walk by the high school.

“Sleepover” features music by Yellowcard, the Spice Girls, No Secrets, Jump5, Hope 7 and pop-punk band Allister. The cast includes Jane Lynch and Jeff Garlin as parents, Steve Carell as a disgruntled mall cop and Evan Peters as a quirky knight in shining armor. There are triumphant moments of female friendship, snapshots of 2000s girlhood, glimpses of first love.

But there’s also a fat joke at the expense of Yancy (Kallie Childress), a girl Julie invites at the last minute when Staci isn’t interested. Staci’s boyfriend is supposed to take her to a high school dance but tries to force her to hook up in his car instead — with his efforts not abating until she physically resists him three times. Julie disguises herself and accidentally goes on a blind date with her teacher. He is at first appalled but then laughs off the situation and lets Julie take a photo with him for the scavenger hunt, remembering his own high school plight.

I wish those foibles of the film were not realistic, but they mostly were. Feeling left out is the one that hits home most for me.

“We live in a sucky universe where wearing the wrong sneakers can make us life outcasts,” Hannah tells Julie when convincing her to commit to the hunt in the first place.

As a middle schooler, I was concerned about the shoes I wore, too. Efforts at individualism stood out against my school uniform of plaid skirts and white Oxford shirts.

Julie realizes by the end of the film that sitting at the fountain isn’t everything.

“Wherever we sit, that’ll be the lunch spot,” she says before Hannah moves away. Presumably, high school will be OK for Julie and her sleepover friends. But what about those for whom it isn’t so easy?

“Time Cut” not only ponders that question, but imagines a world in which kindness prevails as a response to it. The film’s time-travel element reveals that the slasher is from the future, but he was once a student in 2003 who was ridiculed. Lucy changes his timeline by standing up to the bullies.

Antonia Gentry appears as Summer, Madison Bailey as Lucy and Griffin Gluck as Quinn in "Time Cut."

Allen Fraser/Netflix

“One person reaching out and becoming a friend where there was no friend can make a difference,” director Hannah Macpherson told Netflix’s Tudum site.

Lucy saves Summer from the slasher’s revenge along with Emmy, one of the other victims. With her life back, Summer comes out and embraces a public romantic relationship with Emmy. As this occurs at the end of the film, the challenges they may face aren’t explored, but we at least see that Summer’s parents are supportive.

”Sleepover” and “Time Cut” are apples and oranges in terms of genre, with the former being a teen comedy and the latter a mashup of thriller and sci-fi. Yet I keep coming back to the thought that one is a relic of the early 2000s and the other is a modern-day imagining of the time period. “Time Cut” gives 2003 the benefit of 2020s-era wisdom and progress, and I think that’s a productive exercise.

Maybe a new iteration of “Sleepover” could explore the lessons we’re still learning in society today about human relationships and emotions. PenaVega had a 20th anniversary reunion with Childress and fellow co-star Scout Taylor-Compton this year, leaving fans hoping for an on-screen continuation. I’d like to see a movie in which the sleepover gals take a break from their jobs or kids to enjoy a night out, like Julie’s mom did when she went clubbing in the original film. As ever, I want entertainment to keep driving toward messages of acceptance that affirm human dignity.

I relate to Branch, the “All You Wanted” artist, when she sings, “So lonely inside, so busy out there, and all you wanted was somebody who cares.”

“Sleepover” and “Time Cut” signal that I’m not the only one who’s ever felt that way. Behind our flip phones and Walkmans in the 2000s, we were becoming the people we are today. Nostalgia is nuanced but has such power to connect people. I want to keep using it as a tool to better understand myself and others.