With Esther's character based loosely on her own adolescence, Randall was inspired to write the film's script by what she saw as a lack of role models for teenage girls.

The film attracted mixed reviews; some critics praised the originality and the acting, though others found Randall's direction dull and the script poorly written.

After escaping her own Bat Mitzvah, Esther bumps into Sunni, a rebellious girl from the local public school, who she had observed and spoken to on previous occasions.

The two girls form a friendship, and Esther begins attending Sunni's school, unbeknownst to her parents, under the guise of a Swedish exchange student.

As Esther gains popularity and submits to numerous acts of peer pressure – including attacking a girl from her old school – her friendship with Sunni starts to deteriorate.

[3] Based on her original script, Randall was awarded a fellowship to the Los Angeles Film School's Feature Development Programme in 2002.

[6] Randall asked Catanzariti to stay behind and read a scene from the script; she went to a number of callback auditions and was later offered the main role.

[2] Keisha Castle-Hughes was Randall's first choice for the role of Sunni based on her performance in the New Zealand film Whale Rider (2002).

"[25] In a review for The Age, Jake Wilson gave the film 3 stars out of 5, describing it as "a quirky Australian coming-of-age story that gives the genre a good name".

Stratton enjoyed the "terrific" performances, namely from Catanzariti and Keisha Castle-Hughes, while Pomeranz praised the film's "eccentricity" and the discomfort caused to the audience at times.

[30] Variety magazine's Richard Kuipers wrote that the film was "sporadically amusing" and lacked "scripting smarts and pulling power across demographics".

He praised the soundtrack and Castle-Hughes' portrayal of Sunni, but felt that the film was brought down by dull cinematography and "uninspired dialogue and direction".

[24] Bernadette McNulty of The Daily Telegraph noted that the film's greatest downfall was that "the jokes aren't funny enough and the sadness barely breaks your heart".

[31] Luke Goodsell, writing for Empire magazine, awarded the film 2 out of 5 stars and deemed it to be deserving of "an all-purpose warning label to stay the Hell away".

[33] The film received three other AFI Award nominations for Best Screenplay – Original (Cathy Randall), Best Costume Design (Shareen Beringer) and Best Sound (Liam Egan, Tony Murtagh, Phil Judd and Des Keneally).