Quite a title for quite a little movie that’s packed full of quirkiness, great gags and quotable dialogue and actually has a lot more optimism and sweetness at its heart than its name would suggest.
Vanessa Claire Smith (who also wrote the sharp screenplay) plays Chase, a girl not all that unfamiliar with the anatomy of males. Her best friend is “pretty rich girl” Tibbs (played by Danika Sudik) and life is never dull with Tibbs around, mainly because she will always put up money to dare Chase into doing something. Things take an interesting turn when Tibbs offers to pay for the car repairs that Chase badly needs if she’ll seduce and “break in” young Gabe, a member of local religious organisation, The Disciples Of Noah. But as Chase gets to know the people involved, and especially Gabe, her cynicism starts to wear away to be replaced by something new and unknown and . . . . . . . . . . . . . unexpectedly better.
If you’ve just read the above paragraph and can’t shake the words Dangerous Liaisons and/or Cruel Intentions from your mind then you’d certainly be right in doing so. The heart of the story is similar enough and a lot of the points made riff on sexuality, love and rivalry in the same style.
So why bother? Well, as already mentioned, this film’s main strengths lie in the script that’s both smart and funny. Yes, there are obvious pokes at organised religion but not the amount, and obvious ones, you’d maybe think. The insults, the observations and the exchanges are more in the Clueless and Swingers mode than the barbed style of Heathers and Juno (though they’re all within the same family tree). Then we have a lot of intercutting, juxtaposing people’s labels with the reality, that always manages to at least raise a smile and often leads to a big laugh (the reality of “the smart one” had the entire audience laughing out loud at the screening I attended).
The acting is okay (with Michael Kirby standing out thanks to his portrayal of the sweet, devout Gabe and Philip Wofford consistently hilarious as Amos aka “the smart one”) but you can’t help feeling most of the players could have been substituted for someone a little better. No offence to those onscreen but considering the film has such a fun, Wes Anderson vibe going on it’s inevitable that you start to think of the assembled ensemble casts that would have pitched their performances perfectly.
Director Ryan Denmark definitely has talent and he knows how to get a lot of good mileage from material that could easily have been a stale rehash of familiar drama clichés but the movie has a certain roughness around the edges that it can’t get rid of. Not that a lack of polish, in itself, is always a bad thing but in this case more could have been done to make things sparkle and impress. Still a lot of fun though.
DIRECTOR: RYAN DENMARK
CAST: VANESSA CLAIRE SMITH, MICHAEL KIRBY, DANIKA SUDIK
RUNTIME: APPROX 92 MINS
COUNTRY: USA
Film Rating: 
