Crazy/Beautiful

Kirsten Dunst is crazy. Jay Hernandez is beautiful. It doesn't get a whole lot deeper than that in this tale of youthful yearning from actor-turned-director John Stockwell, which occasionally seems to be going for an art-house feel a la Dunst's previous Virgin Suicides, in scenes where the youngsters move almost in slow motion as tripped-out ambient music plays and Dunst's voice-over tells us how memorable the past year was. On the other hand, we also get football games scored to heavy metal, and one peculiar scene at the breakfast table in which jump cuts are used, serving no apparent purpose and never to be used again. The movie's main conceit is a reversal of the usual good girl/poor delinquent guy dynamic: In this case it's the messed-up rich white girl who threatens to derail the noble straight arrow from downtown L.A. Unlike the simplistic pap of Save the Last Dance, race and class issues are more complex and real here; the characters do have prejudices, but race is not the be all and end all (when Hernandez gets stopped by the cops, for instance, they don't bust out the billy clubs and epithets). Since most of the movie is essentially a plotless mood piece, the obligatory third-act crisis and contrived wrap-up actually cause the audience's attention to wane, but there's enough substance here to make Crazy/Beautiful more than worthwhile for its target audience, and certainly more useful than the standard teen crapfests -- these kids actually look like real kids and not fashion models.