½ |
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2001 |
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Rated: R for
graphic language, graphic violence, drug and alcohol use, and strong
sexual content |
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Genre: Drama |
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Directed By: Christina Wayne |
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Running Time: |
| Review
by: Felix Vasquez Jr. |
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Review Date: 9/7/03 |
DVD Features:
Trailer
Interactive Features:
Interactive Menus
Scene Selection |
| If you like this,
try: Bully, Cruel Intentions, The In Crowd, Kids, Girl. |
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TART |
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Catherine Storm (Dominique Swain Lolita, Girl) is a middle-class
reject who hangs out with her seductive best friend Delilah (Bijou Phillips
Almost Famous, Bully) whom tends to stay away from the posh in-crowd.
After a chance encounter with a popular girl (Mischa Barton Pups, The
OC), she begins to become accepted among the status quo until she begins to
see that popularity among upper class isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Probably the best thing about this movie is the
beautiful Bijou Phillips who performs with great grace and develops as a truly
magnetic character towards the end of the movie. She's possibly the only really
emphasized character among the characters in this movie. She's rich like
everyone else yet is strikingly real amidst the phonies and drug users. I would
have loved to see more of her because she's only featured in about a quarter of
the movie and her scenes are the best. She's a better actress than I usually
give her credit for and seems the only sensible person in the film.
This is
yet another grim portrayal of troubled teenagers mingling among more troubled
teenagers; and what's truly disturbing is that most of it seems exaggerated. I'm
not sure if the movie was inspired by true events or concocted by Christina
Wayne, but it's grim, and I wish most of it was even remotely interesting. You
have to wonder if this story makes even the slightest bit of sense or even has a
point or moral by the finale. We watch the gorgeous Swain once again portraying
the troubled outcast as she does in every movie as we see her chronicles through
teenage angst and drug use and yadda yadda. It's a shame she never stretches her
abilities as an actress because she always plays the same role. I've seen this
character before in "Girl". Brad Renfro also continues the same troubled drug
user as he did in "Bully", and "Deuce's Wild" and these acts are getting very
old. The story drags on like a slug, slowly developing into nothing, sparking
some interesting plot points and humorous characters but the finishing product
is blank. We get the sense that Cat's mother is somehow judgmental but she's
mostly a broad stroke of a character in which we never get to learn the essence
or colors of; we also get the sense that her father is basically drawn away from
her life which makes her troubled but he's once again a broad stroke, and
possibly a mob boss, but we never receive a true affirmation of his character's
motives of lifestyle.
Catherine is a truly interesting
character and is sometimes a droll one as her room is plastered with pictures of
Mick Jagger in which she has an obvious obsession with, but that's never played
upon once again. The story takes a dark turn towards the last fifteen minutes
and once again we're pulled in a different direction with the movie. We're
pulled in all sorts of directions by Wayne in the movie which goes from a
poignant coming of age tale for Cat, to a melodrama about teen's, to a black
comedy, then to a romance, and then a murder mystery. The last five minutes make
absolutely no sense as the mother and daughter seal old wounds, but it seems
forced and detached from the actual plot at hand; also it bears no relevance to
preceding events and it never lets us feel heart broken because the
mother/daughter allegory is never shown nor is it emphasized. Director and
writer Christina Wayne has an idea of what she wants her movie to be about but
can never pick which theme she wants to confront, so every character
development, and plot twist, and event seems tacked on and scattered amidst
these range of characters.
A
poorly developed uninteresting movie that doesn't know which direction it wants
to take in its storytelling. Bijou Phillips is great but the rest is just
filler.

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