Yesterday the video for "Ooh La La" by Britney Spears was released to promote Smurfs 2, featuring Spears and her children. She's in full Mom mode here - basically mugging for the camera with animated Smurfs to a theatre full of small children. It's a fun, colorful video and smurfs are cool. No complaints here.
That got us thinking about our friend Britney, though. It's important to remember that for all the crap Britney Spears has been through, she's only 31 years old. We're so used to the crazy tabloid incidents that it's easy to forget the early Britney years, which were around 1998 to 2002. So today we're watching one of the classics from an earlier, simpler Britney time, 2000's "Oops...I Did It Again", directed by Nigel Dick.
You remember this video. It's known for a few things, one of them probably being the red latex suit Spears wears, and also the Martian theme. The Mars theme might seem a little odd, but remember that in 2000 we were pretty into Mars. Both Red Planet and Mission to Mars were released in 2000, and there was the TV movie Escape from Mars in 1999. None of these were any good, but Mars was still kind of a big deal at the time for some reason, and it seeped into this video a little bit. Hooray for Mars.
A few things strike me about this video, one of them being how young and confident Spears looks. She's only 19 here, and definitely in the zone. She even got hit on the head during filming, started bleeding, and came back only four hours later to keep going (the injury was presumably suffered during the scenes where the camera is above her). She's so in the zone that this video features so expert-level camera mugging too, something that was a big part of early Britney Spears videos and performances. There's a ton of energy from her and it carries the video.
It's also interesting to note how little skin Spears is showing in this video. Although that red latex suit is tight, it covers almost her entire body, even most of her neck. It's a different move for a singer who was basically introduced to the US public as a sexy schoolgirl in a sexy schoolgirl outfit. For all of her clothing choices, this red latex suit is probably near the top in terms of memorability, along with her sparkly nude suit and the aforementioned schoolgirl outfit.
There's one major issue I have with this video, however. No matter how over the top and fantastical the concept is, would someone at a space mission control - let alone the one guy who has direct contact with an astronaut exploring friggin Mars say "cute!" to anything an astronaut picked up off the ground? This is one piece I cannot suspend my belief for, but even after that, this video is still one of the cornerstones of Spears' sizable music videography.
If you have fallen out of touch with the Spears videography, however, we recommend taking a look at her recent work, including the fantastic 2011 video for "Criminal" by Chris Marrs Piliero.
Hey remember those behind the video shows MTV used to have? Here's a piece of the episode for this video.
