Crazy/Beautiful

Beneath its attempted gritty facade, Crazy/Beautiful is as generic a re-working of the ‘girl meets boy from wrong side of the tracks, and inter-racial romance ensues’ theme as could be imagined. This is all the more unfortunate, given that the film does at least attempt more realistic teen characterisation than much of the crud currently cluttering up Kirsten Dunst’s CV (Bring It On, Get Over It) – yet it still errs well on the side of total blandness.

Pampered brat wild-child Nicole (Dunst) has already landed herself a drink-driving conviction by the opening scene, earning a community service stint which entails the unenviable job of picking up litter on a Los Angeles beach. All is not lost however, as Nicole soon finds herself in the company of some amiable yet unmercifully cool Latino kids, and finds herself drawn to one of them, the earnest, impoverished honours student Carlos (Hernandez). Soon the script is on overly familiar territory as tensions come to bear on our central couple: they break-up, they make up and rush headlong towards a saccharine denouement, all played out over such standard US ‘indie’ fare as Fastball and The Dandy Warhols.

In Melvin van Peebles’ documentary on the representations of African-Americans in Hollywood, Classification X, he makes the (still) painfully poignant point that cinematic landmarks for the liberal establishment such as Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967) tend to be more patronising than DW Griffith at his worst. Unfortunately, this motif is still evident in such recent films as Save The Last Dance and Finding Forrester, and now Crazy/Beautiful continues the trend with respect to the white/Latino divide.

Elsewhere, the film plays it safer than a George Graham defence: indeed, the 12PG cert should alert you to the fact that Crazy/Beautiful doesn’t exactly cover many of the things that teenagers actually do. Nevertheless, the two solid central performances from Hernandez and the ever-energetic Dunst provide some consolation, as does director John Stockwell’s refreshingly rough-hewn aesthetic.

Besides, anything which puts space between the evidently talented Dunst and her latterday tendency toward playing twitty blonde cheerleader types is to be broadly welcomed.