crazy/beautiful

First black and now brown -- that's the skin color of the male counterpart in what appears to be a string of MTV-inspired dramas featuring a hard-driven lily-white entwined in an interracial romance. Here the perky Kirsten Dunst, much like Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance, plays a disturbed teen who has lost her mother. Despite the similarities, crazy/beautiful is a darker, more cautionary tale than the mainstreamed Last Dance. The daughter of an oft-absent congressman (Bruce Davison), Dunst's Nicole doesn't get along with her controlling stepmom (Lucinda Jenney). As a result (à la the Bush twins?) she regularly gets wasted and is scooped up by the cops.

At school she drags Carlos (Jay Hernandez), the hunky kid bussed in from the barrio each day, into one of her detention-rewarded shenanigans. He's attending the upper-crust establishment with hopes of a better life and admittance to the Naval Academy. Needless to say, the two become star-crossed lovers, with racial stereotypes and self-destructive dysfunctions as the roadblocks to their happiness. Directed jerkily by John Stockwell, the film layers in all the requisite elements; buff bodies, hip-hugging outfits, and a pop-crackling soundtrack, but beneath this veneer crazy/beautiful touches teen angst. At the Apple Valley, Entertainment (Swansea only), Flagship, Holiday, Hoyts Providence 16, Narragansett, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.
-- Tom Meek