Julie Benz, Rebecca Gayheart and Rose McGowan in "Jawbreaker."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we give this film a: Stars: Rose McGowan, Rebecca Gayheart Director: Darren Stein Rated: R Length: 89 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(Feb. 19, 1999) -- What hath MTV wrought?

Almost 20 years after the music channel (which seems decidedly devoid of music these days) hit the airwaves, every weenie-boy with a video camera thinks he's a director, slicing and dicing imagery to a rock 'n' roll beat and calling it a movie. These days, any movie with a shot that lasts longer than four seconds is considered revolutionary, retro or both.

"Jawbreaker" is the latest in a long line of movies that look like videos expanded to 90 minutes. Except that, as in most videos, there is less than three minutes of plot.

Blatantly cribbing from the dark teen comedy "Heathers" (but meaner, if that's possible), "Jawbreaker" would like to be the last word on the perils of high-school popularity. Just a couple of problems: lousy actors and a lousier script.

Written and directed by newcomer Darren Stein, the film centers on a clique of popular girls at a California high school. Too cool for school, as it were, they slink around the halls in miniskirts and makeup, looking like escapees from a fashion runway (and not like many high school students I've seen lately).

The leader of this gang of junior Jezebels is Courtney (Rose McGowan), busty and nasty and dripping with contempt for all she surveys. As a birthday prank on the most popular member of their quartet, Liz Purr (Charlotte Roldan), Courtney and company kidnap Liz out of her bed early one morning and toss her in the trunk of a car in her underwear. They then jam a giant jawbreaker in her mouth and tape it shut to keep her quiet.

They drive her to a pancake restaurant where they intend to force her to actually eat food (as if!). But when they pop open the trunk, little Liz is dead, the jawbreaker forming an unholy bulge in the windpipe it has blocked.

Rather than own up to their misdeed, they put her back in bed for her parents to find, making it look like she's been raped and murdered. But their plan goes awry when school dweeb Fern Mayo (Judy Evans Greer) walks in on them. Only one solution: Kill Fern.

Oops, wrong movie. That would be the solution in any logical film. In "Jawbreaker," Courtney opts to co-opt Fern by bleaching her hair, spiffing up her wardrobe and making her popular - the new Liz.

Oh, what's the point? There were no jokes up to this juncture and there aren't any afterward either. Greer is a feeble, uninteresting actress, but less grating than McGowan, whose every sneering line-reading is like nails on a blackboard - steel nails, not fingernails.

"Jawbreaker" is the movie a guy makes when he wants to sleep with the actresses but can't get to first base without a development deal. Logic and plausibility? Stein is too busy caressing the bodies of these young women with his camera lens. This is the kind of movie that gives independent film (it played at the Sundance Film Festival) and teen movies both a bad name.