THE AISLE SEAT - "DISTURBING BEHAVIOR"
by Mike McGranaghan
What can I say about Disturbing Behavior? I saw it the same afternoon as Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, a film that is one of the most devastatingly emotional movies ever made. Walking into the theater for this movie, I wondered what the point was. How can you follow up one of the most powerful films of all time with a teen horror flick? It's cinematic whiplash - going from one end of the moviegoing spectrum to the other.
By the time the end credits rolled, I was surprised; I liked Disturbing Behavior. A lot. In spite of all rationale, logic, and my own sense of critical judgment.
Set in a small town called Cradle Bay, Disturbing Behavior is the story of Steve (James Marsden), a kid from Chicago whose family moved when the other son committed suicide. The first person Steve meets is Gavin (Nick Stahl), a stoner dude who hangs out with an albino kid nicknamed U.V. (as in rays). Gavin introduces Steve to all the Cradle Bay cliques, the most unusual of which is the Blue Ribbons. What's so unusual about them? Well, for starters, they'd rather hang around the local yogurt shop listening to old Olivia Newton-John records than party. They hold bake sales and blood drives. They are ambitious, clean-cut, and popular. They are also, on occasion, deadly. Gavin believes that they are the victims of a mind control experiment conducted by the guidance counselor.
Enter Rachel (Katie Holmes of "Dawson's Creek"), a pretty but unpopular girl with tattoos and body piercings on every part of the body that can be pierced. Steve is attracted to her, a fact which probably keeps him from hanging out with the Blue Ribbons. But Gavin is right; there is something funny happening in Cradle Bay. Or, as Rachel puts it, there's a nasty case of "toxic jock syndrome" going around.
MGM is pushing Disturbing Behavior as a horror film, no doubt to ride the wave of teen scare movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Truth be told, I think this is more of a satire than anything (it's certainly not scary, but it sure is funny). The target of the satire is popularity. To those high schoolers who dwell on the fringes, the jocks and cheerleaders can be downright frightening. Popularity seems to breed a certain requirement for conformity. If you are willing to sell your soul, then welcome to the club.
I think the movie has a lot of fun with that idea. There are some sharp lines of dialogue and little character touches that poke nasty fun at the cool kids. Then again, there are also some wonderful howlers, scenes that are so ridiculous that they're funny. Like, for instance, the one in which Steve and Rachel break into a mental institution. When was the last time you saw such a place depicted as housing raving, deformed lunatics in this day and age? And yet here it is, as our heroes run for their lives from the scary insane. A couple of other scenes are likewise outrageous, including the ones featuring a rat-obsessed janitor (William Sadler). Disturbing Behavior is a combination of an old-fashioned B-movie and a parody of teenage high school life.
Maybe it's impossible for me to defend this movie in any meaningful way, except to say that I was entertained. The screenplay is often funny, never taking itself very seriously at all. I also liked Katie Holmes, who is a star in the making. Her character is compelling, and I wish she'd been given more to do. The film uses a lengthy opening credits sequence just to stretch the running time to 83 minutes. It's a short flick, but I was disappointed when it was over. The movie is good old dumb fun.
It's also good old smart fun. What a paradox that a movie can be so dumb and so witty at the same time. But then again, the movie's message is paradoxical, too. One the one hand, it speaks about the futility of conformity. On the other hand, it says that kids who want to get good grades, be kind, and make something of themselves are bad, while kids who want to get tattoos, flunk out, and smoke dope are good. Disturbing Behavior sets up all kinds of paradoxes, then lets the audience have a good time sorting them out.
(
out of four)
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