ACCORDING to Cyndi Lauper, girls just wanna have fun.

That certainly seems to be true of Sleepover, a lightweight romp aimed at teenage girls about the trials and tribulations of high school sisterhood.

Unfortunately, while the characters might be having a whale of a time, audiences are more likely to take Joe Nussbaum's film at its word and power-nap through the adolescent heroines' comic misadventures.

Julie (Alexa Vega) invites her best friends Hannah (Mika Boorem), Farrah (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Yancy (Flynn Childress) to celebrate their final day of junior high with a sleepover.

As the girls prepare for an evening of pizza, dressing up and videos, the peace is broken by the arrival of the most popular girl in school, Stacie (Sara Paxton).

She challenges the four friends to a night-time scavenger hunt: the winners are eligible to eat near the water fountain at high school; the losers are consigned to sit by the rubbish bins with the other outcasts and nerds.

Sleepover will struggle to appeal to older audiences with its predictable narrative and cloying sentimentality.

The comedy isn't particularly sophisticated, much of it at the expense of the skateboard dudes and a hapless security guard (Steve Carell) with a grudge against Julie.

Screenwriter Elisa Bell, who penned the equally disappointing Little Black Book, dutifully ticks off all the boxes, including a horribly contrived love interest for the slightly overweight girl of the group.

Vega, Boorem and co. are all wasted - their characters don't face any emotional crises to test their acting mettle - and the finale neatly ties up every loose end.

Life's just not like that.

Rating 4/10