screenhound22 Review of Try Seventeen

Try Seventeen (2002)

The person who wrote the box synopsis should have written the script--Absolutely unwatchable.

[1/10 · 18 July 2004]

There could be some SPOILERS AHEAD but I doubt it. I have no idea how the screenplay for this one made it past the shredder. It's horrible. Completely unwatchable. I hung in there for 45 minutes (about half the running time) and just couldn't stand it anymore. I was an Elijah Wood fan in the '90s (see "The War") and I learned to enjoy Mandy Moore's shifts from bubbly to serious this year (see "Chasing Liberty" which is surprisingly entertaining). I've seen bits of "Run Lola Run." So with three leads I liked this should have been fine. It wasn't. Nobody turned in a good performance. Wood's Jones was flat. For an aspiring writer he had next to no imagination (his violent fantasies looked like they were ripped off from "A Christmas Story" and his lustful ones were--huh, a cross between boring and alarming). Potente is absolutely unlikable from the first second and I'd only know that she was supposed to be "THE girl" by reading the box. Speaking of the synopsis--whoever they employed for that job made the film sound funny, quirky, romantic, and quite enjoyable. Whoever that person was, he or she should have been employed to rewrite this script. By the halfway point, I didn't care about ANY of the characters anymore. Moore's Lisa is an aspiring actress who's bubbly and a little conniving (for no apparent reason at all) but her ludicrous period play (which is supposed to be funny in presentation) is on a par with the rest of the script. There is supposedly a happy, romantic comedy ending to this turkey--given the character material they had to work with, I just can't envision it. Save your money. Warn your friends. DON'T watch this movie.