Spears and her Crossroads co-stars Taryn Manning (Crazy/Beautiful) and Zoe Saldana (Get Over It) were approached by the film's screenwriter, Shonda Rhimes, to help come up with a scene to depict the girls' joy at winning a New Orleans karaoke contest and its prize money. The actresses put their minds to the task and decided that flashing sounded like a realistic way to celebrate.

"You know the writer, Shonda (Rhimes)? She said, 'What's something crazy that you would do with your friends?' you know, and we're, like, 'Oh, flash people.' But we got to write that scene in, but it got cut. We flashed, like, when we were at the hotel celebrating, you know?," Manning says.

Saldana adds, "In New Orleans." Manning continues, "These girls start drinking too much, so we end up going down the hall and flashing a couple doors, but it didn't make it in the movie."

According to Saldana, all three of the film's protagonists, including Spears, took part in the flashing action. But in the end, the Crossroads creative team decided to leave the footage on the editing-room floor. Crossroads, sans bare breasts, is now playing in theaters nationwide.

"Britney" on the album charts:
France #13
Belgium #15
Austria #17
Canada #19
Switzerland #20
Czechia #27
Sweden #27
Denmark #27
Italy #32
Netherlands #47

"Overprotected" on the single charts:
Sweden #6
Italy #9
Ireland #10
Belgium #11
World #11
Denmark #12
France #15
Netherlands #16
Canada #38
 

Britney - who says she is a virgin - has been lined up to play the sex-mad niece of Samantha, played by Kim Cattrall, whose lover she seduces. 

Kim asked Britney to take part in the show after appearing with her in the film, Crossroads. 

A show insider said: "Samantha thinks her niece is a virgin, but nothing could be further from the truth." 

1. ``John Q,'' $20.6 million. 
2. ``Crossroads,'' $14.6 million. 
3. ``Return to Never Land,'' $11.8 million. 
4. ``Collateral Damage,'' $9.1 million. 
5. ``Big Fat Liar,'' $8.7 million. 
6. ``A Beautiful Mind,'' $8.5 million. 
7. ``Hart's War,'' $8.3 million. 
8 (tie). ``Black Hawk Down,'' $6.2 million. 
8 (tie). ``Super Troopers,'' $6.2 million. 
10. ``Snow Dogs,'' $5.8 million.
 

1. JOHN Q - $6,003,500 
2. CROSSROADS - $5,113,000 
3. RETURN TO NEVER LAND - $2,684,500 
4. COLLATERAL - $2,215,000 
5. HART'S WAR - $2,061,000
 

With 17 million copies of her new CD sold, she is about to synergise. Her first film, Crossroads, a sorority road movie, opens next month. She has also published a fluffily inspirational first novel, A Mother's Gift, co-written with her gooey mom, Lynne, who once taught school but has 'taken time off to be her daughter's biggest fan' (which means, I suspect, going on the payroll). 

The marketers turn all cosmic when describing Britney: she is 'the planet's biggest megastar'. The sun itself revolves around her. Her tour bus has a tanning salon, so she can treat herself to heliotherapy and honey-tone her skin when on the road between gigs in the middle of the night. Britney says that she intended 'to be big all around the world', and her chest has expanded to keep up with her ambition. Wherever you look, she is there - inside my head, and also lurking, as I discovered, in every letter of the alphabet. 

A is for America, which Britney nubilely, precociously, go-gettingly embodies. The country is a permanent adolescent like her; she enacts its brash, mercenary dreams and its constitutional guarantee that everyone's wishes will come true. 'Go for what you want,' her mother told her when entering her in television talent quests at the age of nine. On 11 September, she was flying across the Pacific to Australia. Aware of her patriotic obligation, she immediately returned home to comfort her people and, given the amount of flesh she customarily exposes, to taunt the dress sense of all those dowdy, covered-up Afghan frumps. 'I think America is the best country in the world,' she announced. 'I really do.' 

B is for Brittany, which is perhaps what her parents - back in those benighted days before we had SpellCheck to help us - named her after. To her family, she is known as Brit-Brit; if only to maintain the alliterative beat, she once had a Yorkshire terrier called Bitzi, though the dog may, given Britney's fondness for scanty threads, have been named in homage to that 'itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini' in the ancient pop song. 

Britney believes in her own manifest destiny, and her name may also explain her designs on British royalty. Her email flirtation with Prince William ended when she arrived for a meeting to be told by a sentry at the palace gate that he was out hunting. Britney, who can be vixenish on occasion, slunk away, her brush between her legs. Nevertheless, she remains fond of Britain - she adores 'the shopping, and your accents' - and has built a mansion in Louisiana for her mother that is 'all Tudor, like a British house'. It even has an Elizabethan-themed media-room. 

We enjoy favoured status, since in Britney's world, other countries consist mostly of hotel suites. However, the heroine of A Mother's Gift plans a customised grand tour. Her boyfriend wants to 'race on the autobahn in Germany' and 'eat pizza in Rome', while she intends to visit Austria because she has heard that this is where they made The Sound of Music, her 'favourite movie of all time'. 

C is for Cola, Pepsi to be precise, which paid Britney £63,000 per second to jive and jiggle through the commercial breaks on this year's Superbowl telecast. The show concluded with her performance of an anthem entitled ''The Joy of Pepsi'. She is canned effervescence, with rip-tops strategically positioned all over her costume. 

D is for Dolls, which Britney collects and also merchandises. There are those who think she is one herself, like the inflatable ladies they used to sell in Times Square novelty shops. Singing 'Hit me bay-bee one more time' or 'I'm a slave for you', she plays at being an S&M Barbie. You can buy your own Britney, position her plastic limbs at will or have her do striptease routines. When she met Madonna's daughter, Lourdes, the shy child asked her assistant (even pop kids have PAs) to whisper a message in Britney's ear. 'She has all your dolls,' said Lourdes's lady-in-waiting. 

E is for Evil, which Britney incarnated at the age of 11 when cast as a diabolical infant in a Broadway play based on the horror film, The Bad Seed. She shrieked, hollered and rampaged through the theatre in a fit of devilish ecstasy. The hypothesis of demonic possession intrigues me. Frank Skinner showed a clip from one of her pre-pubescent concerts during his recent television interview with Britney. A sonic cyclone issued from the tot's braced teeth, booming in the contralto register as she gave vent to an age-inappropriate lament about unrequited passion. 'There's a slight element of The Exorcist about this,' Skinner remarked with a shudder. Britney, engagingly inane as ever, wailed: 'Oh my gosh, oh my goodness, oh my Gaaaahd!' 

F is for Fan Base. Those battalions of randy teens are intrepid. Britney has moved her family to their new Tudor ranch-house inside a gated community because her customers, as if seeking holy relics, used to invade the front yard of her former home and carry off clods of soil. 'I mean,' Britney asked, 'what do you want with dirt?' I just can't imagine. 

G is for Geek and Goob, which Britney sometimes calls herself, as in 'I'm just, like, this geeky person from Mississippi' or, when she wore a tanktop with flannelette pyjama pants to an interview, 'I look like such a goob'. On other occasions, she will define herself as 'a total dork'. She's right in all cases: remove the make-up, send the stylists home and you unveil a gawky, inarticulate teen with a big nose, teeth that resemble the radiator of a 1950s Cadillac and vacant, unfocused eyes. It's a mystery. 

H is for Horse. Britney does not ride, but could once be seen - thanks to some digitally manipulated pixels - enjoying equine sex in a remote corner of the internet. Is it for this that Al Gore invented the information highway? 

I is for Implants, euphemised by Britney as ''that whole boob thing''. She denies having been pumped full of silicone, and says: 'I just grew.' Soon after the presumed procedure, she was back on tour, announcing: 'I can't wait to come to England and show my English fans an awesome set.' This turned out to be a reference to the songs she'd be singing. Or is her voice an implant, too? She also denies lip-synching at concerts. 'I'm singing my ass off,' she insists. 'I'm, like, totally live.' 

I wonder. Britney also calls her film, Crossroads, 'really real', though, of course, it's a comforting fantasy in which all problems are promptly resolved, and stardom and happiness both come automatically so long as you desire them intensely enough. Britney's sense of reality is, to say the least, relative. In A Mother's Gift, people and places are recurrently compared with fictitious prototypes: an office is 'like something from a TV show' (which absolves Britney the novelist from the bother of describing the room) and a snooty woman has 'the moneyed look that villains had in movies'. But this counts as realism of a kind, since Americans spend so much time imitating or aspiring to resemble characters in sitcoms. 

In interviews, Britney repeatedly says: 'I'm a real girl' or: 'I'm for real', as if hoping to convince herself. Like her breasts, she both is and is not. This little person is also, as she admits, 'a show business product', designed to occupy a lucrative commercial niche: a bionic amalgam of flesh and financial engineering. The boob thing sums up the conundrum. A myth is a lie that tells the truth. 

J is for Justin Timberlake from the boy band *Nsync, who is Britney's sweetheart. They page, they text and, when she calls him, she often says she'd like to wriggle down the telephone wire, squirm out through the receiver, and clamber inside his face. Even so, Britney has confessed that Brad Pitt is 'like, the ultimate', and she once challenged Ben Affleck to a game of strip poker. Queues of contenders wait to fill any vacancy: on the internet, there's an oversubscribed site for Future Husbands of Britney Spears. 

K is for Kinesiology, in which Britney's brother, Bryan (as I said, it's an alliterative household) majored at college. Don't ask me for details of the curriculum. Maybe it involves the study of Britney's piston-pumping, arm-flailing dance routines. On the family's website, her mom reports that Britney recently had tuition in 'soccer skills' to prepare her for her Superbowl appearance. As for academic credentials, Britney herself was 'home-schooled', though she makes amends by despatching her heroine to college in A Mother's Gift and having her take a class in 'World Lit'. This, presumably, is like World Music with the amplification turned down. 

L is for Lolita and Lubrication, which go together. Britney defines herself as a nymphet in Crossroads: 'I'm not a girl but I'm not yet a woman,' she caterwauls. Though she has sternly said: 'I don't want to be part of someone's Lolita thing', one of her handlers must have studied Nabokov's novel. Humbert, absconding with his underage stepdaughter, sees double entendres everywhere, even at petrol stations: 'A garage said in its sleep - genuflexion lubricity; and corrected itself to Gulflex Lubrication.' In Crossroads, Britney's dad owns such an establishment, and as she skips town with the stubbled hunk who later deflowers her, she casts a backward glance at the sign which offers - I swear it - lube jobs. The snake, as Nabokov knew, was wriggling through the garden long before the fall. 

M is for Moroccan vibe, which is how Britney describes the decorative style of her Los Angeles pad. Inside, impersonating a harem girl, she slouches around in flip-flops and those flannel jammies. She likes sultry climates. 'When it's hotter,' she reasons, 'you tend to wear less clothing.' 

N is for Na-Na-Na-Na-Na, the first line of a song in Crossroads, based - as Britney proudly points out - on one of her own poems. She thinks the heroine is 'like me because she's always writing. Sometimes the words come to me when I'm, like, in the bath or stuff'. 

O is for Octaves, of which Britney possesses four. The heroine of A Mother's Gift, hauled out of bucolic poverty by a scholarship to a musical academy, thrills to the Moonlight Sonata, which she recognises from a detergent ad, and ponders a motto by Thomas Carlyle on the school's cupola, which claims that music is the speech of angels. Britney's notion of the art she practises is somewhat less ethereal. Her favourite line of movie dialogue comes from American Pie, where a raunchy teen boasts: 'One time, at band camp, I stuck a flute up my pussy.' Is this what Britney means when the girl in her novel reaches 'a place only music could take her'? Wherever the breath comes from, Britney's body sings. 

P is for Prayer, in which Britney places a reverent trust. A sign in her Louisiana neighbourhood benignly advises: 'Drive Carefully, Live Prayerfully.' Every night before she sleeps, she does what she calls 'my devotional'. God pays particular attention to Britney's murmured nocturnal requests, and, like an obliging aerial DJ hosting a phone-in programme, immediately answers them. 'I would pray "I hope my song plays on a certain radio station that's really big", and it would happen. Then, "I hope they play the video on MTV", and they did.' Our Father once reached down from heaven to grab Britney's leg and pull a muscle in it during a dance routine: 'I think it was Him giving me a sign that I needed a break. I thank Him for it.' Not since Jacko suffered so many little children to come unto him has a pop singer enjoyed so close a relationship with her maker. In A Mother's Gift, Britney awards herself a miraculous birth - well, actually a Nativity - which, of course, takes place on Christmas Eve. The Pope has invited her to contribute to an album of Christmas prayers. So far, Britney has not mimicked Madonna by masturbating with a crucifix, but if she did she would probably have divine approval. Can God be a dirty old man? 

Q is for Quotations, inspirational slogans copied by Britney into her Prayer Journal. This chronicles her 'spiritual journey', the celestial equivalent of the more carnal car trip in Crossroads, which leads from Louisiana to California where Britney at last surrenders her expensive virginity. 'I have a lot of wisdom,' she world-wearily claims. 'I've had a lot of lifetime experiences.' All the same, I suspect that the thoughts in Britney's breviary will not require much chewing. As she says of the girl in A Mother's Gift, 'her mind was a bowl of mush'. 

R is for the Republican Party, which dotes on Britney. During the election campaign in 2000, a Bush aide called her 'one of our greatest assets'. Bob Dole, also running for the Republication nomination, dosed himself with Viagra and appeared gloating lecherously in one of her Pepsi commercials. She sells herself as zealously as any politician: in the summer of 1998, she appeared at 26 shopping malls across America and, after one concert in Massachusetts, she managed to greet and pose for photographs with 300 family groups in only 25 minutes. It's this merchandising operation, swollen by deals with Sunglass Hut and Tommy Hilfiger as well as Pepsi, that the Republicans admire. Britney sometimes refers to 'my package'. By this, she does not mean the straining tops and jutting bottoms she wears but to her product profile, her demographic reach and her market penetration. Britney is global capitalism in a micro-mini. 

S is for Satisfaction, denied to Mick Jagger. When Britney met him, she recoiled from his kiss as if confronted by a crumbly, decrepit vampire. Nevertheless, she has recorded Jagger's song, primly detoxifying its lyrics. Jagger spurns the pitch of a washing-powder salesman because 'he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me'. Britney doesn't need the phallic prop as a means of self-definition. In her version, she resists the importuning of a girl on TV who 'tells me how tight my skirt should be', because 'I got my own identity'. Britney often tells her adolescent constituents to be proud of their sexuality, though she then confusingly adds that they should not have sex before marriage. This paradox will be more closely inspected further down. 

T is for Totally, Britney's favourite adverb. After taking delivery of freebies from Hilfiger, she reported: 'My mom and my sister are like totally walking around in Tommy stuff.' Asked whether she and Justin understood each other, she cooed: 'We totally do.' And, with a grateful glance at the sky, she once asserted: 'I am totally blessed.' She has every right to appropriate the word. She is, after all, a totalitarian phenomenon. 

U is for Umbilical Piercing. A diamond stud twinkles in Britney's navel (and, while we're taking physiological inventory, she also has a daisy tattooed on her toe). Her tummy bud is an innie, not an outie, so the incision was excruciating. 'I guess I don't have a good flap,' she said afterwards. 'You're supposed to have a flap of skin that's thin, but mine's thick.' Can't you just feel her pain? 

V is for Virginity, which Britney prizes and has sought to preserve. Supporting the sacred pledge made by the young Christians who adhere to a cult of chastity called True Love Waits, she famously but non-committally said: 'I want to wait to have sex until I'm married.' Then, sounding increasingly less convinced, she added: 'I do. I want to wait. But it's hard.' 

Her defloration, so agonisingly delayed, at last occurs in Crossroads. She first rehearses with an anaemic nerd who shares her Bunsen burner in chemistry lessons, but scrambles out of bed after a sneak preview of his puny rig. On the road with her girlfriends, she plucks up courage in a giggling discussion of what it's like 'to touch one'. Her own hands, at this stage, have still not made contact with hydraulic tissue. Consummation finally occurs at Santa Monica, as an engorged, torrid sun plunges into the Pacific and breakers foamily thrash on the beach. The chosen one is the roughneck in greasy denim who, fresh out of jail, drives Britney and her chums across the country. As he shucks off his shirt and spreads himself on top of her, we see the tattoo that qualifies him for the task - a pair of Mephistophelean wings, sprouting on his back. It is a truly supernatural moment. The Baptist babe has given herself to a fallen angel, who may be the bearer of the above-mentioned bad seed. If they felt the earth move beneath the motel bed, it must have been the San Andreas fault tearing open to protest at America's loss of innocence. 

W is for Wedding. Never mind about the devilish scenario described in the previous entry. Britney's marriage will be pantheistic, since she intends to wed the universe (having already coupled, at least in their imaginations, with a goodly proportion of the men in it). 'I would like an outside wedding,' she confides. 'On the beach, really beautiful. Barefoot, you know. Like, really simple.' 

X is for XXX, which is what some think Britney should be rated. In one of her concerts, she made callisthenic love to the kind of pole lapdancers like to impale themselves on, and in Crossroads she performs in a karaoke bar wearing spiked-heel boots, ravished cut-offs, a studded belt and a threadbare T-shirt with FREEDOM emblazoned across it. For a Rolling Stone session with the photographer David LaChapelle, she seethed in her frilly bedroom as if it were a tart's boudoir, then went outdoors to push a tiny bicycle wearing tinier shorts with BABY spelled out in diamanté across one of her butt cheeks. Prudes classify Britney as kiddie porn. 

Y is for Y-Fronts, which she dances in at the beginning of Crossroads. The scene sums up Britney's teasing appeal: she is singing in her bedroom, using a spoon as her microphone. We suspect that she is secretly pigging out on ice cream, which in calorie-conscious America is synonymous with sin. But no, she's feeding from a bowl of blameless cereal. Her dad puts a stop to the little orgy by bringing in her academic gown, cleaned and pressed for her high-school graduation ceremony, and reminding her that she is bound for medical school. Dr Britney - now there's a thought! And here's another: what's her father (played by the goggle-eyed Dan Aykroyd) doing in her bedroom in the first place? Forget his excuse about the dry-cleaning. He is there, I suspect, to represent the intrusive, impertinent middle-aged male gaze. 

But back to the Y-fronts, which both reveal and conceal, hinting at what Britney lacks. The underpants are morally safe, because, by her standards, they're old-fashioned in their baggy modesty. Apart from thongs and sports bras, Britney has no use for lingerie. Her clothes - a rubberised catsuit, for instance, designed by the woman who outfits the felines in Sex and the City - are so minimal that they don't allow for any other layer beneath them. Suddenly Madonna, wearing those armoured foundation garments on top of her clothes, looks positively matronly. 

Z is for Zits, known to those with British complexions as pimples or blackheads. Those pustular fried eggs are Britney's fatal flaw, and her mom travels in her entourage on perpetual zit alert. But it's mom whose cooking is responsible for those flare-ups: 'I eat grilled cheeses in all the big hotels,' sighs Britney, 'but no-one can grill cheese like my mom.' Britney is a dietary recidivist. Her heroine in A Mother's Gift unpacks her luggage at the swank academy from a Warholesque pile of tomato-sauce cartons; the girl's trailer-trash mom jokes that her recipe for tomato soup is ketchup plus water. 'I love junk food,' says Britney unrepentantly. 

Which is just as well, because, come to think of it, that's pretty much what Britney is. Like junk food, she sells instant gratification and, in doing so, she triumphantly Americanises the supine earth. She should come wrapped in greaseproof paper, with a straw, or perhaps a flute, to make ingestion easier. 

THE phenomenon that is Britney Spears enters a new arena with "Crossroads" - a movie so pathetically lame that hopefully even her most ardent young fans will give this stinker a big thumbs down. 

At least Mariah Carey's acting debut in "Glitter" was unintentionally hilarious. Though Britney's uncertain stabs at emoting drew a few titters at a preview screening the other night, mostly she's just unbearably stiff, awkward - and remarkably bored for someone making her film debut. 

A more apt comparison than Carey would be Britney's role model, Madonna - another hardened blond bombshell who has appeared in an unending series of flops. 

"Crossroads" actually opens with Britney singing along with Madonna's "Open Your Heart" - the first of many, many appearances in her underwear. 

Indeed, the screenplay attributed to Shonda Rhimes often seems like little more than a litany of excuses for Britney to bare her midriff and shake her booty. 

This determination to pander to her fans undercuts what little credibility she might have given Lucy, a Georgia valedictorian and good girl who undertakes a road trip to find the mother who abandoned her as a child - and, it often seems, to discover her inner tramp. 

Lucy's companions are two childhood friends, Kit (Zoe Saldana), pregnant trailer trash; and Mimi (Taryn Manning), a somewhat haughty black teenager. For no explicable reason, they allow themselves to be chauffeured in a '73 Buick convertible by aspiring rock star Ben (Anson Mount) - even though the girls believe he did time for killing a man. 

Their adventures comprise every girl-power cliché in the book, including a karaoke-bar rendition of "I Love Rock 'N' Roll" - and the first use in many years of the pregnant-woman-falling-down-the-stairs scene, brought in to provide a limp climax for the shapeless narrative. 

Britney is the black hole at the center of this tiny universe. Her line readings are so atrocious and her scenes so curiously edited that you get the feeling director Tamra Davis ("Guncrazy") labored many hours in the cutting room to make something (barely) releasable. 

Just watch Britney when another character is talking - rather than listening, she looks as if her mind is somewhere else, perhaps thinking about last night's grosses. 

She's about as vulnerable and spontaneous as a 16-wheeler - 21 going on 40 - and utterly self-absorbed. 

Just about the only response to her character saying "Why don't I do something for me, for once?" is to laugh derisively, as the preview audience did. 

Dan Aykroyd soldiers bravely through a couple of scenes as Lucy's dad, but mostly you wonder how they managed to find young actors with skills so modest they didn't act Britney off the screen. 

The movie's one clever touch is to cast "Sex and the City" vixen Kim Cattrall as Lucy's mom; she actually looks the part. But their confrontation lasts literally seconds - one suspects because Britney couldn't hold up her end of the scene. 

"Crossroads" is so mind-numbingly awful that you hope Britney won't do it one more time, as far as movies are concerned. She's one pop tart who's been left in the toaster too long. (1/2 star)

Spears, the honey-blonde singer who, since 1999, has ruled the pop charts with suggestive teenybopper hits ("Oops! . . . I Did It Again"), plays Lucy, an 18-year-old Georgian. After graduating as her high school's valedictorian (mercifully, we're spared her speech), she heads cross-country with two childhood friends (Saldana and Manning). Lucy's objective: a visit to the mother (Kim Cattrall) who abandoned her and her dad (Aykroyd) when she was 3. The movie's objective: female bonding with elementary school paste as Lucy and buds yak about old times and sex, earn cash warbling at a karaoke bar (one guess who sings lead), tipple and confront impending adulthood. Lucy, a virgin, also links up with a caring ex-con (Mount). He sets a poem of hers to music ("I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," Spears's new hit single), which beats roses any day. 

First seen in bra, panties and socks enthusiastically lip-synching to Madonna's "Open Your Heart," Spears doesn't embarrass herself here, but she's rarely more than pleasantly bland. Making a more vivid impression is Manning as Lucy's pregnant pal; she comes across as a junior Amy Madigan, complete with scratchy voice and a ferocious energy. As Lucy's beau, Mount maintains an air of resigned patience, like a male ballet dancer awaiting the next lift. (PG-13) 

Bottom Line: She's not a joke, not yet an actress 

A role model (sigh) for young girls and a sex symbol for young boys, Spears is ever-mindful of looking her cutest. OK, we're covered there, but acting is another thing. Sure, she tries to emote (she cries, pouts, bursts into fits of giggles), but it's all one note.

As a good girl who graduates from high school with stellar grades, Spears tragically has never gone to a football game, party or "just hung out." She's named valedictorian — mercifully, we're spared her words of wisdom — and laments to her father (Dan Aykroyd in a thankless role) that she missed out on all the fun.

Enter the girl power. They're no Thelma and Louises, but Britney and her two Georgia gal pals (Zoe Saldana, Taryn Manning) take to the road and set their sights on California. Rekindling the friendship they had as 10-year-olds, the three find a way to parlay their singing into an act, while transforming their clothes into glamorously skimpy costumes. Britney proves she's not that innocent when she wows the locals in a Louisiana bar by suggestively crooning Joan Jett's I Love Rock-'n-Roll. Along the way, Britney falls for a hunk (Anson Mount) and loses that pesky virginal stigma.

Not since That Thing You Do! have we been subjected so repeatedly to a movie tune. Not only must we hear her warble "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman" several times, we must also endure her intone the lyrics as "poetry."

Such foolishness proves Britney's still a girl, not yet an actress. (1-1/2 stars)

Britney dresses dirty, but she wants us to know she's Christian clean, so look but don't paw. She wants us to know that she's approachable and always up for fun -- a spoofy ''SNL'' skit, a photo op with 'N Sync boyfriend Justin Timberlake, a sock hop, a clambake -- but she'll have to check with her manager first. In form, content, and packaging, she's a made-in-the-USA dream, right down to her Spalding-ball breasts, Crest-sparkling smile, and Borden's-calf, wide-set eyes.

The millions of preteens and their parents who love her for her Scotchgarded girl-woman perfection aren't going to be disappointed by Crossroads. Heck and gosh, neither was I, so impressed and even charmed am I by the expertise with which Britney has been gently launched as a movie star. This girl-dream road trip, a kid sister to ''Boys on the Side,'' with a friendly jiggle or two of ''Coyote Ugly'' thrown in, not only makes excellent use of the singer's sweetly coltish acting abilities, but it also promotes a standardized set of sturdy values with none of Mariah Carey's desperate ''Glitter,'' or any of Mandy Moore's gummy pap in ''A Walk to Remember.'' Family is important, but good friends can make things better for those with imperfect families. Drinking alcohol is icky. No one worth knowing smokes. As always, an American girl should follow her bliss -- but she should also phone home.

Above all, look to Britney Spears; she'll do the right thing. Why, from her very opening shot in ''Crossroads'' she does things right, bouncing in her undies in her girlish bedroom, holding a spoon for a microphone (no hairbrush available?) and lip-synching to Madonna's ''Open Your Heart.'' Here, Britney's called Lucy, and we quickly know this: (1) She's not just a dish, she's also valedictorian of her small-town Georgia high school class; (2) she wants to find the mother in Tucson who ditched her when she was 3, leaving her to be raised by her overprotective car-mechanic father (Dan Aykroyd); (3) her worst faults, according to the meanest kids in the hall, are that she's ''sweet, proper, nerdy... and a virgin''; (4) Kit (Zoë Saldana) and Mimi (Taryn Manning), her two best childhood friends, have grown up to become a luxury-loving buppie clotheshorse engaged to a cad at college in L.A. (that's Kit), and a self-described daughter of trailer trash now pregnant, unmarried, and eager to drive far away from her bad-luck present to a more exciting future in star-making California (that's Mimi). 

Thus the three young women find themselves riding west in a cool '73 Buick convertible with Mimi's mysterious male friend, Ben (Anson Mount), a hunky guitar-playing loner with a rep for having been in jail, possibly for murder, who turns out, of course, to be an upstanding fellow who unchains Lucy's heart. And bod. There has been some consternation, I gather, among members of the Society for the Preservation of Virginal Role Models, that Britney, as Lucy, relinquishes her tiara as princess of purity. But what's exemplary, for those who would consider such things, is the admirable way in which Lucy does assert control and exhibit maturity about her own sexuality. Among the many concise, lesson-plan scenes by Shonda Rhimes (who wrote the fine teleplay for ''Introducing Dorothy Dandridge'') is an early one in which Lucy gently but firmly says no at the last minute to sex with her high school boyfriend (hey, girls: as is her right), which contrasts effectively with the slow, honorable, deepening relationship between Lucy and Ben that leads most naturally, and with no camera gawking, to bed. 

Not everything in ''Crossroads'' unfolds so smoothly. Lucy's contact with her mother (Kim Cattrall!) is just plain weird, and a subplot involving the circumstances of Mimi's pregnancy is contrived and false -- a serious subject treated as mere device, a detour from Britneycentrism rather than the real-deal major moral drama it deserves to be. But Tamra Davis, the music-loving director who knew exactly how to let Drew Barrymore be Drew in ''Guncrazy'' (and, for that matter, let Adam Sandler be Adam in ''Billy Madison''), drives this sporty vehicle with pro precision. In ''Crossroads,'' Britney has been delivered to the big screen safe and sound, the way we like our 20-year-old superstar girls to travel on the fame freeway. (B+) 

Spears, 20, whose first film Crossroads is released in the US this weekend, would take the role played by Ali MacGraw in the 1970 hit. 

Timberlake, also 20, would be the new Ryan O'Neal, who discovers his lover is dying from cancer. 

Film studio Paramount was mum yesterday. A spokesman said he could neither confirm nor deny Spears and Timberlake had signed up. 

The Arthur Hiller-directed Love Story made big stars out of O'Neal and MacGraw. And it produced a theme song still played today. 

As for O'Neal and MacGraw, their roles have been reversed in real life. 

It is O'Neal who is suffering from life-threatening leukemia, while his screen pal provides support. 

Timberlake, of 'N Sync, and Spears are the couple in Tinseltown today. 

While they may have fine voices, their acting skills are largely unknown. 

Just click on the picture below to buy it today

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Spears’ designs are a representation of her feelings following the attacks of 9/11. One shirt features her handprint with a red, white and blue design in a patriotic salute printed on a standard black cotton T-shirt. The second shirt designed by Spears features her two hands arranged in the form of a dove-in-flight reflecting her hope for peace and it is printed on a fitted black cotton skinny-tee. Proceeds from the sale of the shirts, $22.00 for the standard and $24.00 for the skinny, will benefit the Britney Spears Foundation. 

“I am so thrilled to be able to raise funds for my Foundation with the sale of the shirts. The designs came straight from my heart and I hope all my fans will help support the Foundation and its many worthy programs by buying the shirt,” said Britney. 

Justin Timberlake has chosen to depict the tattoo he has on his upper left arm in an artistic rendition of the actual design. His gold cross against a black background creates a striking image on the standard black cotton T-shirt. All three shirts incorporate the logos of the charity along with the Planet Hollywood logo on the back of the shirt. Proceeds from the sale of this shirt, selling at $22.00 will benefit the Justin Timberlake Foundation. A skinny T-shirt version of Justin’s tattoo shirt will be available soon for $24.00 

“My T-shirt design is very personal to me as are the goals of my Foundation. Supporting music programs in the schools will help nurture new talent that might have gone unnoticed without proper funding,” Timberlake said.  

Go ahead: Adore or abhor Britney Spears. But there's no denying that the 20-year-old pop princess--like her idol Madonna--has become a one-name icon, a singing, dancing, acting corporation: Britney Inc.

KidNews was part of a group of people who sat down recently with Britney to talk about her album, "Britney"; her new movie, "Crossroads" (PG-13, out Friday); and what it feels like to be one of the most adored, and most criticized, people on the planet. Here's some of what she had to say:

The girl in love

It's no secret that Britney and her boyfriend, 'N Sync's Justin Timberlake, practically grew up together. They were both on the "Mickey Mouse Club" and became superstars at the same time. Because of their history, Justin may be one of the few people who understands what it's like to be Britney. "His opinion means a lot to me," Britney says. "I mean, he's everything to me. If I have something that's really weighing on my mind, he's always there for me."

How did Justin react when he saw her debut movie, "Crossroads"? According to Britney, he laughed off a scene in which her character, Lucy, cranks up 'N Sync's "Bye Bye Bye" on the radio and her hunky co-star's character (Anson Mount as Ben) reacts by steering the car off the road because he hates the song. But he was less comfortable with another scene: The first time Justin saw her kissing Mount on screen, he had to turn his face away.

She hates being called a role model

Critics say that by appearing in steamy music videos, often without a lot of clothes on and sometimes with a snake, Britney is sending the wrong message to young girls. Britney says that's ridiculous: Kids like to fantasize about what it's like to be a star onstage, but they understand the difference between a performance and what's real. She says: "I sometimes think it's kind of lame when someone places a label on someone as being a role model. When I was younger, I looked up to people like Janet Jackson and Madonna. They were major inspirations for me, but I also had my own identity and I knew who I was, you know? I think we should know that we're all special."

What she thinks of her critics

Britney swears she doesn't mind the constant complaints about her clothes, makeup, hair and voice. "I don't take myself that seriously," she says. "I just have to laugh it off, you know? I find it interesting they find me so interesting."

On beating her own records

Britney says she knows teen pop isn't as popular as it used to be and she probably won't sell as many records as she used to. Her third solo album, "Britney," has sold well, though not as well as her past records. Out in November, it ranked as one of 2001's top five debuts, selling more than 745,000 copies its first week in stores. "It's kind of hard to top something like 'Baby One More Time' and 'Oops,' " she says. "And honestly, I pray that it does [sell as many copies], but my expectations aren't really there."

Why she's at a 'Crossroads'

Britney came up with the idea for "Crossroads." In it, Britney plays Lucy, a poor girl who drives across country with her two girlfriends and a guy they just met (Mount). Taryn Manning, Britney's real-life best friend, plays her closest pal. "I had been having a lot of offers and stuff and really cool scripts, but this was just something I felt like my heart was into, and that's probably why I really wanted to do it," she says.

In the movie, Britney's character feels caught between being a teenager and being an adult. Britney says she feels the same way at times, and it's a theme she explores in her new single, "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman." "I'm really just coming into my own and becoming the person I want to be--I don't even know who I am right now, you know? I just am. And have no idea what I'll be like in the future. Hopefully, just a good person." 

BILLBOARD 200 HISTORY: Britney
week (14) ending 02.16.02 #17
week (13) ending 02.09.02 #25
week (12) ending 02.02.02 #22
week (11) ending 01.26.02 #21
week (10) ending 01.19.02 #20
week (09) ending 01.12.02 #14
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week (07) ending 12.29.01 #4
week (06) ending 12.22.01 #3
week (05) ending 12.15.01 #4
week (04) ending 12.08.01 #5
week (03) ending 12.01.01 #3
week (02) ending 11.24.01 #2
week (01) ending 11.17.01 #1 (debut)
 

Reigning Queen of Pop Britney Spears actually holds her own in Crossroads, her film debut, which hits theaters nationwide on Friday (February 15th). Although the movie is essentially an unexceptional coming-of-age chick flick, Spears and her co-stars manage to have a genuinely good time and bring the audience along for at least one leg of the ride. 

Spears convincingly plays the innocent act as Georgia virgin Lucy, the high school valedictorian (it's a movie, remember?) who's trying to come to terms with growing into womanhood after graduation. On a quest to find the mother who abandoned her as a child (played by Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall, who really could pass for Spears' mom), Lucy catches a cross-country ride toward Los Angeles with two childhood friends (the delightful Taryn Manning and Zoë Saldana) and a misunderstood ex-con (Anson Mount), who doubles as her love interest. 

While the gaggle of girlfriends is busy bonding over tales of teen pregnancy (Manning's character is knocked up), we discover mystery man Mount may be not so bad after all, especially when he woos Lucy by setting some of her poetry to music. Depending on how far out of their teens viewers are, these scenes come off as either incredibly tender or painfully hokey. But after a botched pink-bra-and-pantied attempt at losing her virginity earlier in the film that's sure to delight the guys in the audience, you can bet she gets it right this time. 

The film could be called the celluloid equivalent of Spears' music, offering, like, style over substance. Ever attentive to pop fans' attention spans, it even features two mini-music videos. One comes during an unexpected stop in New Orleans, where Lucy & Co. enter a karaoke contest to raise the cash to fix their car. At last, Lucy gets a makeover and goes from conservative good-girl to buff, belly-baring Britney Spears so she can belt out a cringe-inducing rendition of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" (which appears on her latest album, Britney). If you're not already sick of Spears' current hit, "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," you will be by the end of the flick and can plan to skip the encore performance that runs with the credits. 

Skip the flick if you're a cynical pop-music hater, but if there's a younger Spears fan in your life, chances are he or she will have a good time watching and singing along to Crossroads. Remember: Spears can't lip-sync her lines in this one.