What happens if you are too lazy to turn off the TV and curious whether or not Joshua Jackson is going to play the same character once again? You get stuck with a weird, cheap movie. Halfway through, you just wish you could turn it off before the inevitable plot twist happens, but you can not. Why? Because there is something weirdly fascinating about this movie, something entirely unrelated to the stupid plot, the bad actors and the pretentious art school feel that is certainly very artificial. Director Davis Guggenheim has quite a lot of experience with directing TV show episodes, but he should have remained a producer of movies (he produced "Training Day" and the classic "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead").
Oh right, fascinating – even worse than just watching it for the entertainment of considering all the James Marsden mixes drinks a Tom Cruise in Cocktail reference – I found myself fascinated with what this movie actually does say about all those people in their early or mid-twenties, because I can not help but thinking that this is quite an expressive movies, just like "Reality Bites" is for the generation before us. We already knew that the Yuppies in the 80s were quite cold and lacked any kind of ethical restrictions, actually, that's what Bret Easton Ellis has dedicated his creative life to proving. But what about the next generation, those born in the late Seventies and Eighties (I was born in the late Eighties, so I count myself among them) – actually, these are the same people "The OC" talks about, and we feel secure in our little, inglorious, middle-class existence – after all, we are not rich, we do not live in villas.
The movie centers on three young students, Derek (James Marsden), a rich kid living in a huge apartment, who does not have to study in order to make an income and has no obvious future plans. He gives shelter to two of his friends, the artsy yet weird Travis (Norman Reedus), and the smart and poor (they try to play this fact up by pointing out her hatred of rich people numerous times) Cathy Jones (played by Lena Headey, seenlast as Piper Perabo's love interest in "Imagine Me And You"). They are cynical, self-involved and have no aims in live, except probably entertaining themselves. As a semester project for their mass communication course, they decide to spread a certain piece of gossip and watch how it grows and changes. The target of their plans is Naomi (Kate Hudson), one of Jones' hated rich girls, famous for never sleeping with her boyfriends. Derek watches her and her current boyfriend, Beau Edson (which beats the stupidity of Joshua Jackson's previous, Pacey Whitter), as they don't have sex – and then persuades his roommates to spread the rumour that the angelic Naomi finally broke her vow to remain a virgin. The gossip spreads quickly on campus, but takes an evil turn for Beau when Naomi decides that, if she really had sex that night, it must have been rape.
The movie is entertaining and probably even revealing to some point, seeing how the story changes, which is the basic idea of the children's game "Chinese Whispers". But then, the movie takes the evil turn of including a rather stupid story about Devon's past, which turns him into the ultimate evil in the very end. On the way there, we are only shortly entertained by Edward James Olmos, now of BSG fame, with a really, really huge moustache.
But why would I be interested in this little piece of "we are so beautiful and rich" crap? Because sometimes, the movie accidentally reveals the depths of emptiness this generation suffers. The self-involvedness, lacks of morals, egoism of the three protagonists lets you draw conclusions about the writer that wrote that piece of script – just like "Dawson's Creek", the movie has a lot of dialogue about society and media and morals, but talking about it turns it into something fictional. Those people are so sure of themselves, so sure of being the only ones that count. Just take the megalomaniac art of Travis, this is "l`art pour l'art", completely devoid of meaning while trying to pretend to be ultra-meaningful, at the same time. This is the same problem the movie has. It tries to be more than just a cheap piece of gossip, it tries to be a revealing movie about how society works. But in fact it is nothing more than the ridiculous Selbstinszenierung of the ego-driven communication professor, self-involved, meaningless in any other context. The movie celebrates the young, fresh faces of the actors, but every one of the three main characters seems to be somewhere else all the time – Marsden is mainly face, and, as in X-Men, his main value is the fact that he looks like a younger, less edgy Tom Cruise. Lena Headey basically plays the 2000-variation of Winona Ryder in "Reality Bites" – but if this movie makes a point, and even only unintentional, it's that these young people have no aims and no values, nor do they search for any meaning in life, which sets them apart so distinctively from Coupland's "Generation X" – so Lena Headey remains empty, although she is the one constantly pointing out that what they did was wrong. In the end, no one except for Derek is punished.
On the lighter side of things, Jackson and Edward Olmos doe a great job because they are like icons, their main value is that you know them from somewhere else. They do exactly what they are supposed to do. And just one paragraph about Kate Hudson – she seems to be more of an angelic, fictional creature in this movie, an idea more than an actual character – and that is exactly the feel she gives to her role. "I am too talented to be in that movie", she seems to say, and she does not say a lot, her main job is to float through the picture, look surprised, and be the model for the art Travis creates so busily. Her character holds the promise of something the movie could never achieve. But the mere fact that I managed to write so many words about it proves me wrong. It is hard to admit this, but this is the movie-version of "The OC", the modern variation of "Reality Bites", an entirely unintentional portrait of a new, self-involved generation, devoid of meaning and with no reason to search for one.
Oh right, fascinating – even worse than just watching it for the entertainment of considering all the James Marsden mixes drinks a Tom Cruise in Cocktail reference – I found myself fascinated with what this movie actually does say about all those people in their early or mid-twenties, because I can not help but thinking that this is quite an expressive movies, just like "Reality Bites" is for the generation before us. We already knew that the Yuppies in the 80s were quite cold and lacked any kind of ethical restrictions, actually, that's what Bret Easton Ellis has dedicated his creative life to proving. But what about the next generation, those born in the late Seventies and Eighties (I was born in the late Eighties, so I count myself among them) – actually, these are the same people "The OC" talks about, and we feel secure in our little, inglorious, middle-class existence – after all, we are not rich, we do not live in villas.
The movie centers on three young students, Derek (James Marsden), a rich kid living in a huge apartment, who does not have to study in order to make an income and has no obvious future plans. He gives shelter to two of his friends, the artsy yet weird Travis (Norman Reedus), and the smart and poor (they try to play this fact up by pointing out her hatred of rich people numerous times) Cathy Jones (played by Lena Headey, seenlast as Piper Perabo's love interest in "Imagine Me And You"). They are cynical, self-involved and have no aims in live, except probably entertaining themselves. As a semester project for their mass communication course, they decide to spread a certain piece of gossip and watch how it grows and changes. The target of their plans is Naomi (Kate Hudson), one of Jones' hated rich girls, famous for never sleeping with her boyfriends. Derek watches her and her current boyfriend, Beau Edson (which beats the stupidity of Joshua Jackson's previous, Pacey Whitter), as they don't have sex – and then persuades his roommates to spread the rumour that the angelic Naomi finally broke her vow to remain a virgin. The gossip spreads quickly on campus, but takes an evil turn for Beau when Naomi decides that, if she really had sex that night, it must have been rape.
The movie is entertaining and probably even revealing to some point, seeing how the story changes, which is the basic idea of the children's game "Chinese Whispers". But then, the movie takes the evil turn of including a rather stupid story about Devon's past, which turns him into the ultimate evil in the very end. On the way there, we are only shortly entertained by Edward James Olmos, now of BSG fame, with a really, really huge moustache.
But why would I be interested in this little piece of "we are so beautiful and rich" crap? Because sometimes, the movie accidentally reveals the depths of emptiness this generation suffers. The self-involvedness, lacks of morals, egoism of the three protagonists lets you draw conclusions about the writer that wrote that piece of script – just like "Dawson's Creek", the movie has a lot of dialogue about society and media and morals, but talking about it turns it into something fictional. Those people are so sure of themselves, so sure of being the only ones that count. Just take the megalomaniac art of Travis, this is "l`art pour l'art", completely devoid of meaning while trying to pretend to be ultra-meaningful, at the same time. This is the same problem the movie has. It tries to be more than just a cheap piece of gossip, it tries to be a revealing movie about how society works. But in fact it is nothing more than the ridiculous Selbstinszenierung of the ego-driven communication professor, self-involved, meaningless in any other context. The movie celebrates the young, fresh faces of the actors, but every one of the three main characters seems to be somewhere else all the time – Marsden is mainly face, and, as in X-Men, his main value is the fact that he looks like a younger, less edgy Tom Cruise. Lena Headey basically plays the 2000-variation of Winona Ryder in "Reality Bites" – but if this movie makes a point, and even only unintentional, it's that these young people have no aims and no values, nor do they search for any meaning in life, which sets them apart so distinctively from Coupland's "Generation X" – so Lena Headey remains empty, although she is the one constantly pointing out that what they did was wrong. In the end, no one except for Derek is punished.
On the lighter side of things, Jackson and Edward Olmos doe a great job because they are like icons, their main value is that you know them from somewhere else. They do exactly what they are supposed to do. And just one paragraph about Kate Hudson – she seems to be more of an angelic, fictional creature in this movie, an idea more than an actual character – and that is exactly the feel she gives to her role. "I am too talented to be in that movie", she seems to say, and she does not say a lot, her main job is to float through the picture, look surprised, and be the model for the art Travis creates so busily. Her character holds the promise of something the movie could never achieve. But the mere fact that I managed to write so many words about it proves me wrong. It is hard to admit this, but this is the movie-version of "The OC", the modern variation of "Reality Bites", an entirely unintentional portrait of a new, self-involved generation, devoid of meaning and with no reason to search for one.
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