PARK CITY -- "Pretty Persuasion" is too broadly played to achieve its dark satirical aspirations and too downright silly to pass for a serious commentary on contemporary society. What it is is a teen comedy with pretensions -- the one element most teen comedies mercifully avoid. Few cliches get overlooked as writer Skander Halim and director Marcos Siega take the usual easy shots at mean school girls, immature parents, sex-obsessed male teachers, easily corrupted journalists and Beverly Hills in general.
The film plays with no more depth than a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, just much greater length. Some might be interested in the jokiness and sexual misbehavior, but the material is too cartoonish to win a large following among teens and young adults.
Bad-girl protagonist Kimberly, played by the new go-to actress for teen heroines, Evan Rachel Wood, is a conniving, cynical vamp at 15. She uses her sexual charisma to get what she wants when she wants it from classmates and adults alike in a private Beverly Hills high school. In a revenge plot -- revenge for what is not immediately clear -- she talks two fellow students, bubble-brained Brittany (Elisabeth Harnois) and Arab immigrant Randa (Adi Schnall), into going with her to school authorities to accuse their English teacher (Ron Livingston) of sexual harassment. The poor guy, who might be guilty in thought but not deed, gets caught up in a media storm of scandal, fueled by an ambitious lesbian TV reporter (Jane Krakowski) and a trial that takes place seemingly the next week.
Siega eggs his actors into over-the-top performances, the most egregious of which belongs to James Woods, who plays Kimberly's uncouth, racist, foul-mouthed, coke-snorting, phone-sex-addicted industrialist dad. (Then again, maybe there is no other way to play such a role.) Siega pushes most of his movie into the broadest of comedy, especially trial scenes that bear no resemblance to anything that could occur in a courtroom.
The filmmakers then engineer an abrupt tonal shift in the third act in a bid for gravity. Let's call it the "American Beauty" ending, complete with a violent death and garbled social message. It doesn't wash.
Other things in the film feel equally as fake, such as sets that don't look lived in and an annoyingly jocular musical score.
PRETTY PERSUASION
Roadside Attractions/Samuel Goldwyn Films
Prospect Pictures
Credits:
Director: Marcos Siega
Screenwriter: Skander Halim
Producers: Todd Dagres, Carl Levin, Marcos Siega, Matthew Weaver
Executive producers: Joni Sighvatsson, Jason Barhydt, Eric Kopeloff, Robert Ortiz
Director of photography: Ramsey Nickell
Production designer: Paul Oberman
Music: Gilad Benamram
Costume designer: Danny Glicker
Editor: Nicholas Erasmus
Cast:
Kimberly: Evan Rachel Wood
Percy: Ron Livingston
Hank: James Woods
Emily: Jane Krakowski
Brittany: Elisabeth Harnois
Grace: Selma Blair
Randa: Adi Schnall
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 108 minutes...
The film plays with no more depth than a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, just much greater length. Some might be interested in the jokiness and sexual misbehavior, but the material is too cartoonish to win a large following among teens and young adults.
Bad-girl protagonist Kimberly, played by the new go-to actress for teen heroines, Evan Rachel Wood, is a conniving, cynical vamp at 15. She uses her sexual charisma to get what she wants when she wants it from classmates and adults alike in a private Beverly Hills high school. In a revenge plot -- revenge for what is not immediately clear -- she talks two fellow students, bubble-brained Brittany (Elisabeth Harnois) and Arab immigrant Randa (Adi Schnall), into going with her to school authorities to accuse their English teacher (Ron Livingston) of sexual harassment. The poor guy, who might be guilty in thought but not deed, gets caught up in a media storm of scandal, fueled by an ambitious lesbian TV reporter (Jane Krakowski) and a trial that takes place seemingly the next week.
Siega eggs his actors into over-the-top performances, the most egregious of which belongs to James Woods, who plays Kimberly's uncouth, racist, foul-mouthed, coke-snorting, phone-sex-addicted industrialist dad. (Then again, maybe there is no other way to play such a role.) Siega pushes most of his movie into the broadest of comedy, especially trial scenes that bear no resemblance to anything that could occur in a courtroom.
The filmmakers then engineer an abrupt tonal shift in the third act in a bid for gravity. Let's call it the "American Beauty" ending, complete with a violent death and garbled social message. It doesn't wash.
Other things in the film feel equally as fake, such as sets that don't look lived in and an annoyingly jocular musical score.
PRETTY PERSUASION
Roadside Attractions/Samuel Goldwyn Films
Prospect Pictures
Credits:
Director: Marcos Siega
Screenwriter: Skander Halim
Producers: Todd Dagres, Carl Levin, Marcos Siega, Matthew Weaver
Executive producers: Joni Sighvatsson, Jason Barhydt, Eric Kopeloff, Robert Ortiz
Director of photography: Ramsey Nickell
Production designer: Paul Oberman
Music: Gilad Benamram
Costume designer: Danny Glicker
Editor: Nicholas Erasmus
Cast:
Kimberly: Evan Rachel Wood
Percy: Ron Livingston
Hank: James Woods
Emily: Jane Krakowski
Brittany: Elisabeth Harnois
Grace: Selma Blair
Randa: Adi Schnall
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 108 minutes...
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