MovieMartyr.com - Crazy/Beautiful

Crazy/Beautiful is a relatively by-the-book teen drama that gets points for its social consciousness. The film, which focuses on two young lovers (Kirsten Dunst and Jay Hernandez), is more aware than most genre entries of racial difference and class structure. The film is surprisingly bold in many of its choices and flies in the face of conventional Hollywood attitudes toward such things. Race is not an immediate issue to the successful congressman, but to a lower-class Latino family it’s a bone of contention. The liberal father is criticized for being too liberal, while the latchkey kid is the responsible youth on display. It’s got a great, semi-realistic look to it, and doesn’t gloss up the proceedings much beyond adding an intrusive pop soundtrack. The fact that the events never escalate into a heavy-handed tragedy is refreshing, even if the film’s ending is excruciatingly preachy and pat.

The leads share chemistry that’s decent enough, and that’s somewhat surprising, since Dunst is made to play Nicole, a thoroughly irresponsible and unlikable character. The booze swilling, flesh-baring daughter of a politician, she seems to be a more attractive version of Jenna or Barbara Bush. She’s definitely the crazy half of the relationship, and there’s little doubt that she’s a bad influence on her boyfriend, Carlos (Hernandez). The film’s brief suggestion that he’s using her to get a letter of recommendation from her father is surprisingly audacious, but the allegation unfortunately turns out to be unfounded. The film’s conflict arises as they try to discover a happy medium between their personalities, but one can’t seriously imagine these two being together for a long term relationship, so it all feels fairly moot. Still, the dialogue is rather sharp, and much of the film holds the audience’s attention. Nicole’s wardrobe is pleasingly skimpy as well, so there’s a PG-13 level of titillation to be found. As Nicole’s behavior grows somewhat tiresome the film wears out its welcome, though I am not sure I would blame Dunst for it. The role is somewhat underwritten, and her profound problems get a generic, movie-of-the-week explanation. Carlos’ character is much more sympathetic though love eventually passes as his sketchy motivation. The disappointments in the film don’t sting too much though, since the entire enterprise is so modest. The film doesn’t aspire to be anything more than a soap opera, so when nothing more ever comes from it, we don’t mind. While there are certainly worse ways to spend an hour and a half (such as the similarly themed Drew Barrymore / Chris O’Donnell-starrer Mad Love), it’s not exceptionally noteworthy either.

11-09-01

Jeremy Heilman