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

Held up next to the recent Netflix film “Time Cut,” “Sleepover” shows its age but takes me back to the person I once was.

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.