When the Lifetime network announced that they would be making an unauthorized biopic of pop star Britney Spears’s life called Britney Ever After, sensible people knew that it would be chock-filled with melodrama and ridiculous storylines. And predictably, fans and viewers savaged the movie, which debuted on Lifetime on Saturday Feb. 18, for its melodrama, historical inaccuracies and unflattering portrayal of Spears.
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Tyler Oakley quickly lambasted the movie, with the former asking, “Who lit this movie #britneyeverafter and why does he hate women?”
Other Twitter viewers pondered whether Spears could sue Lifetime over this film and called it a “two-hour alternative fact.”
Criticisms of the movie ranged from historical inaccuracies to how it seemed to jump from one point of Spears’s life to the next with little coherency. But as Billboard argued, perhaps the biggest problem with the film was that while it clearly intended to be a rise, fall and redemption story, it portrayed Spears as a silly little girl who stumbled into stardom and then had bad things happen to her.
A Musician without music
Another major problem the biopic faced was that since Spears never authorized the film so it never had permission to play any of her music. Without the ability to play the singer's music, the film struggled to show Britney’s rise as a musician and then a world-famous pop star. It failed to show how Spears worked hard and was motivated to reach where she did, instead portraying as a vapid girl who says “Y’all” a lot.
Furthermore, the historical inaccuracies shown made Spears look even worse. In the film, Spears and Justin Timberlake frantically look for a missing sex tape made supposedly while they were busy wedding planning. While rumors of such a tape between the two were commonplace in the early 2000s, it likely never existed. Later, the film portrays a rumored dance-off those two had in 2002 in a nightclub, which once again likely did not happen.
Overall, the film is less a biopic of Spears than a compilation of all the tabloid rumors and drama surrounding her over the years. It is thus hardly surprising that fellow celebrities and Britney’s fans do not appreciate Lifetime’s project.