Crazy/Beautiful

I’ve discovered something recently about new Hollywood films, I think. I’m starting to believe that they are little more than very long music videos. Certainly, watching them is like watching two hours of MTV (or Much Music here in Canada, of course!!). I’ve had this idea lurking within my brain before, but it was only with the viewing of Crazy/Beautiful in which I really focused on this theory.

Crazy/Beautiful has a very interesting story line. The romantic couple in this case are two high school students. Carlos (Jay Hernendez) is a straight-A student who plans to go to a naval academy, while Nicole (Kristen Dunst) is a troubled girl who, in her first scene, is doing community service (picking up trash at a beach) as punishment for driving under the influence. Carlos and his friends meet her as she’s picking up the trash, and later on, Nicole gets him into trouble when she and her friends keep him out of class for a few minutes too long, sending them all into detention.

Nicole tries to make it up to him, and this is where the romance begins. Nicole is quite sexually aggressive, and has him in her bedroom fairly quickly. She’s so lacking in modesty that she expects them to have sex in broad daylight with a huge, open window, and she laughs when Carlos expresses shock at seeing Nicole’s father walking by outside, unaware.
But Carlos finds out that he’s in luck, because Nicole’s father (Bruce Davidson) is, in fact, a congressman, and could help him get accepted into the naval academy. The father seems to like this young man, as well, and hopes to help him out.

The relationship gets quite problematic because of Nicole’s past. There’s a scene where the two talk about parents who have left them. Carlos father left him when he was about five, while Nicole says that her mom left her when she was 12. But there turns out to be a lot more to the story than that, as we find out later. And Nicole is generally a self-destructive person, given to all sorts of acting out and forms of alcohol abuse and the like.

The music video theory came up for me when I noticed that about every two minutes there seemed to be yet another song and a montage. This was kind of annoying, since all this proved is that the story was pretty threadbare. Sure, the premise is interesting, and had the potential to be a pretty good romance, but if we were to cut all of the songs, we’d only have a hour-long feature, I’m sure of it! You’ve probably seen some of these longer music videos, where there would be a song, with occasional bursts of “drama” either before, after, or during the song itself. That is sort of what it feels like here -- you get a scene, then you get a song, you get a scene, then another song, etc.

This film is nowhere near as annoying as some of the other music videos masquerading as movies. At least Crazy/Beautiful has some nice moments. One of the more interesting is how this movie gives a somewhat nice twist to a lame cliché. Many of these movies have a scene in which the daughter’s dad tells the boyfriend to <i>stay away from my daughter!</i> This movie has that too, but this is not coming from a dad who hates the boyfriend. The dad, in this case, thinks that he’s helping the guy out. He sees the potential this man has, and he also thinks he sees the lack of potential that his own daughter has, so he tells the guy to stay away from this self-destructive individual. The congressman is obviously looking out for this guy’s future, and Bruce Davidson makes you believe that he’s doing this with fully good intentions.

The two main actors have a sexy chemistry. This movie is a PG-13, but just barely... just enough to make you want more, I suppose! Of course, what I like when it comes to the steamy stuff is the fact that they bond in the bedroom in other ways as well. This is where the conversation about their absent parents occurs, as they lie in bed together.

The actors also make you feel sympathetic toward their characters. Carlos is a good fellow, who seems too good for his more loutish friends, for sure. He has to deal with both the stress of his studies and the stress of his relationship.

Nicole, on the other hand, is troubled, and while it’s easy to say that she ought to grow up and stop acting so idiotic, it’s also true that she shouldn’t have to be alone for the rest of her life just because of it. There’s a nice scene when Nicole confronts her father about how he had told Carlos to avoid her. She basically asks why he would drive away the one person who loves her.

Of course, the usual stuff is still here. Carlo’s mother objects to the relationship, and some of Carlo’s friends, playing the race card, also object. Nicole’s stepmother is a real so-and-so toward her, and tries to find a way to banish her from the house and from the presence of the stepmom’s child. And of course, it’s no surprise that Love Conquers All. I just wish that the people who make movies nowadays could actually spend more time with dialogue and characters, rather than trying to make a long music video. I’ve seen movies like Charlie’s Angels, and Tomb Raider, and others, and am amused at all the silly attempts at keeping eyes glued to the screen. There’s so much cutting and quick editing, so many musical montages, and short, quick scenes that usually consist of loud action, short one-liners and quips, or silly attempts at comedy. Obviously, acting and dialogue don’t cut it anymore. The other week, I watched Billy Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie, and it’s clear that you couldn’t make a movie like that anymore. You can’t make a movie with smart dialogue, dark humor, and still have big stars and make lots of money.
Crazy/Beautiful is a tolerable love story, so I’ll give it three stars, but I think I’ll stick to the classics.

Rating: ***

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