Gimme Shelter

Vanessa Hudgens is most known for her role in High School Musical but her latest film attempts to convince audiences that she’s not just your typical Disney starlet. Gimme Shelter is the dramatic, true life story about a young pregnant girl who finds herself alone and without help. It’s Hudgens’ most challenging role to date and one that fans won’t even recognize her in. While her performance is memorable, the film itself is not without a few hiccups.

Apple Bailey (Hudgens) is a 16-year-old girl who find herself pregnant and runs away from her abusive and drug-addicted mother June (Rosario Dawson). She searches out for her father (Brendan Fraser), a successful broker on Wall Street, but when the tension between the two of them becomes too great, she once again wonders the streets. It isn’t until she hits rock bottom and finds herself in a shelter built specifically for pregnant teens that she finds the family that she’s been looking for all along.

Gimme Shelter is based on a group of homes in New Jersey run by Kathy DiFiore and Hudgens’ Apple is an amalgamation of the girls who lived there. The premise is pretty basic and almost feels like it’s more about the shelter itself than the people who live there. It can seem like one big advertisement/plea for money at times. Sure, the cause is a good one, but it takes attention away from some of the strong performances on screen.

Both Hudgens and Dawson are unrecognizable in their roles, from Hudgens’ weight gain and haircut to Dawson’s drug influenced look. It’s strange and welcoming to see a side of them I’ve never seen before and they absolutely dazzle on screen. It quickly becomes evident that Hudgens isn’t some one trick pony, either and that she has the skills to turn heads.

While Gimme Shelter’s story doesn’t do itself any favors, the cast performances should be applauded nonetheless. It’s one of those films that is far from perfect but is still decent enough to warrant a viewing.