What if your name were Erica Yurken? What if you had ambitions to be a famous actress? What if you could not stand your family, your older sister who is always out on dates and a younger sister who for years has thought she was a horse?

What if you couldn’t stand your mum’s truckie boyfriend and, though you loved your mum, she still acted as if she was in Kath and Kim? These are the yearnings and dilemmas of Erica Yurken whom nobody at school really likes. She is very well played by Saskia Burmeister.

Then, one day, a new girl comes into the class and sits next to her. It is singer Delta Goodrem as Alison Ashley whose mother manages restaurants, who dresses beautifully and could win a Keira Knightly look-alike contest. Friendship blossoms… but can jealousy be far behind? No.

Poor Erica lives a tormented life. She is good at her work but not appreciated. She volunteers to write the school play and be the star but she freezes and really can’t act. Who will replace her? Alison Ashley, of course. Erica is mean, devious, destructive, then tries her best to imitate a teacher on the phone to make sure Alison’s mother comes to the play. She is unmasked, rebuked – and is forbidden to attend the performance. But, of course, she has it all wrong.

Alison is a poor little rich girl, neglected by her mother and gets on well with Erica’s family. She does make a booboo in neglecting Erica and going off with her fashionable friends. But, she is sorry. And she does her best with the play. Erica has to get over hating the very nice Alison Ashley.

She is supported unreservedly by Mum (Tracy Mann) and finds a really good and decent friend in the truckie (Richard Carter) who acts as an empathetic father-figure. Even the lout who plays the romantic lead reforms.

This is not a film designed for a male sensibility. It should reach its targeted female audience, especially those girls who feel like Erica inside.

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