Critic Reviews
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
A messy but hungry film like this is more interesting than cool technical perfection.
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| 75 |
New York Daily News
Sloppy, self-satisfied and surprisingly heartfelt.
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| 63 |
New York Post
Less an updated version of the Dostoevsky novel than an unusually somber Hollywood teen love story.
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| 60 |
TV Guide
Melodramatic look at alienated California high school students.
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| 48 |
Mr. Showbiz
Somehow manages to stay afloat on a sea of pretension, thanks largely to some splashy visuals.
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| 40 |
Film.com
The whole point is nothing more than the revelation that the terrain of suburbia is populated with damaged people inflicting damage on others. This is still news?
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| 38 |
Chicago Tribune
Just say no.
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| 30 |
Village Voice
Often succumbs to the craven hysteria perhaps inherent in its hoary premise.
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| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Not faithful enough to be an adaptation, too misguided to be considered an interpretation, and not funny enough to be a parody, this film would do well not to advertise its inspiration.
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| 20 |
LA Weekly
A cut above the usual teenage-wasteland movie.
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| 20 |
The New York Times
Completed before the release of "American Beauty," this contrived, puffed up little picture nonetheless seems like a ripoff, perhaps because it mines the same tired assumptions and unexamined stereotypes about suburban family life.
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| 20 |
Salon.com
Even dressed up in tabloid lighting and cut with jagged edits, this pulp nihilism never goes beyond daytime TV banality.
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| 10 |
Los Angeles Times
The "crime" was that it was made in the first place and the "punishment" is having to watch it.
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| 0 |
Entertainment Weekly
A somber, draggy, deadweight, lugubrious, absurdly self serious version of ''American Beauty.''
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