Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jay Hernandez
Director: John Stockwell
Rated: M15+
OVER the last few years, a screen genre has started to gain momentum – the Kirsten Dunst teenage movie.
She has proven that she is a very talented actress and has a strong screen presence – and she is not 20 yet.
She made an impact in Little Women as well as Interview with the Vampire. She has done excellent cameos in films like Wag the Dog.
In 1999, she appeared as a doomed teenager in The Virgin Suicides, a grim look at respectable America and the malaise beneath the surface. Since then she has moved to some comedies, the Kirsten Dunst teenage movies.
In 2000 there was the amusing cheerleader rivalry in Bring it On. Earlier this year there was the high school romance (during the performance of a musical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Get Over It.
In the former films, Kirsten was the nice, sparky and sympathetic student. In Crazy/Beautiful, she reverses roles.
She is a rich, spoilt brat, resenting her mother’s suicide and her senator father’s remarriage. And persuasive she is in that role.
Jay Hernandez performs the function Kirsten had done in the other films. He is a conscientious Latino student who is attracted to her, tries to help her and almost ruins his own life in the attempt.
Nothing startling, but not too bad.
